corned beef and hash

Phew! What a whirlwind last month was! I hope everyone survived the holidays and at least made it out the other side mostly unscathed. Even if you haven’t thoroughly recovered (financially or mentally).

Justin and I spent Christmas with his family. We totally enjoy doing the one by one gift opening and seeing what everyone gets (though it does take all morning, I love it). After eating a big turkey dinner, we played Hallmark bingo.

For those not familiar with the game, you fill the spaces with things that would happen in a Hallmark movie instead of numbers. You watch a Hallmark (or a facsimile thereof) movie, and as things happen in the movie; you fill in the spaces. The spaces can say things like “Interrupted kiss” or Making cookies” or someone saying “Just like mom!” I got the idea from a co-worker. We originally anticipated someone having a bingo every 15-30 minutes, but that turned into an hour and a half before anyone got a bingo. Everyone liked the game so much that I think it’s going to become part of our Christmas tradition. There was so much laughter and rooting for specific things to happen in the movie, like “a family sits in front of an Xmas tree.”

I must have been good this year, because I got some great thoughtful Christmas gifts. One of my favorite gifts was an oil diffuser. Though I haven’t quite figured out which essential oils complement each other. I first used Eucalyptus, but by itself, it smells like Vicks! So my living room smelled like a sick room for about an hour before I mixed in other oils to help dilute it (Haha!). I did look up some inspiration for what oils to mix and am now loving the spa-like scents, much to Justin’s dismay (though I think he secretly likes it, because he is always in the living room when the diffuser is on).

So, you may have noticed that I have started posting every other week instead of every week. It was after much thought and discussion with friends and family, that while I love blogging, cooking, and writing, I find that it’s hard to post every week with all my other engagements: writing club, volunteering, work, family commitments. However, that being said, I’m excited about my upcoming posts! And I have a little something special planned for Valentine’s Day.

Ok, so Justin and I were asked to bring brunch for Christmas morning, and decided that corned beef hash and blueberry ricotta pancakes would be good options has one is savory and the other sweet. Justin made the corned beef hash while I made pancakes, and it turned out that the hash was way better and more popular than the pancakes. I mean, wow. The Irish really got this soul food thing down.

I think the trick, which we hadn’t done before, is the addition of the heavy cream. Yes, it means more calories, but it totally changes the complexion of the dish to create something that your taste buds will thank you for over and over again. Since there were six of us, we doubled the recipe. And we didn’t add any salt because corn beef has plenty of salt to begin with. We hope you enjoy this as much as we and our family did!

Serves: 4

Ingredients:

3 Russet potatoes

1 medium white onions

1 cans of corned beef

4 tablespoons of unsalted butter (1/2 a stick)

5 tablespoons heavy cream

Pepper to taste

 

Directions:

Use baked potatoes the day before (60-90 minutes at 350 degrees). Or make the potatoes before hand to quicken the time spent on this. Refrigerate them so in the morning, you just have to cut them up into cubes, leaving the skins on.

Dice the onion, chop up the corn beef hash, and mix all of this together, and add pepper.

Add butter to a Teflon-coated skillet coated pan over medium-high heat. (Note: The food stuck to the metal skillet. And the bigger the pan, the less time it will take to cook.)

Once the butter melts, add the mixture, ensuring to flatten it out so it cooks evenly and becomes crispy. Making it crispy can take anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes. Once it becomes crispy, turn the heat down to medium and continue to occasionally flip it so the other side also becomes crispy.

Once the mixture is to desired crispiness, drizzle in the heavy cream, and mix. Over medium heat, allow the mixture to get crispy again and flip occasionally.

Once the mixture becomes crispy again, it is ready to serve.

Adapted from The Fannie Farmer Cookbook, 13th edition, by Marion Cunningham, 1990.