If you’re making corned beef today, you need this recipe for your leftovers tomorrow!
It’s tradition to make corned beef and cabbage (as well as potatoes, carrots, and soda bread: here’s my recipe for cheese soda bread) for St. Patrick’s Day at our house. One year I corned my own beef: you can see how it went here and here. This year I bought locally grown and corned beef from a local shop that carries local goods. I liked it the best of any corned beef I’ve had so far because it had a really mild flavor to it and it also did not shrink when I cooked it (yes, there can be shrinkage involved!).
We like to make Reuben soup (recipe here) with our leftovers, but I also am very fond of corned beef hash, or red flannel as it is colorfully referred to sometimes. I’ve been really looking forward to it this year after having breakfast in a restaurant that had it on the menu, but when I asked they admitted it was not homemade (=canned or frozen with those tiny horrible round pebbles of corned beef in it).
Corned beef hash is the perfect next day dish for St. Paddy’s Day because you can really clean up your leftovers with it and it has a completely different flavor and texture than the corned beef dinner itself. Your family is not going to roll their eyes and say “Leftovers?!” Make it for breakfast, lunch, brunch or dinner – it doesn’t matter. You’ll love it for any meal. I always serve mine with ketchup! Some folks like to serve fried eggs with it, but I like it without.
This is a great leftover recipe because you can make it to use up leftover potatoes, leftover corned beef or both. It’s also simple to make if you have NO leftovers at all (just cook some potatoes in the microwave and use deli corned beef).
I learned the oven trick from my friend Debbie Koenig, who partially cooks her latkes in the oven (check out her method here).
- ½ small onion, chopped
- 2½ tbsp olive oil
- 4 cups cooked potatoes (skin on or off), diced into 1 inch cubes
- salt and pepper to taste
- 1½ cups cooked corned beef, diced into 1 inch cubes
- ½ tbsp butter
- Note that although I'm giving you a size for your dice on the potatoes and beef, it's really up to you how big you like them.
- Heat a large skillet over medium high heat and add ½ tbsp olive oil and the onions. Cook until translucent and starting to brown. Add the potatoes and the rest of the olive oil and the salt and pepper, and turn the heat to high. Allow the potatoes to sit for several minutes before turning.
- If you are using potatoes that were boiled with corned beef, they are going to be very wet. I like to transfer the contents of the skillet to a baking sheet (or if you are using an iron proof skillet, just use that) and move the potatoes to a 425 degree oven where I spread them out on the baking sheet and let the high heat dry them out for about 20 minutes. If you're using potatoes that were baked or microwaved, you can skip this step and just continue cooking on the stovetop.
- Transfer the potatoes back to the skillet and add the butter (if you never left the stovetop, continue to cook until they potatoes are getting brown before you add the butter). Turn the heat to high and get a really good brown color on the outsides of the potatoes, being careful not to turn them too often (they can fall apart if you handle them too much), but enough so that they do not burn.
- When they're close to being golden brown and crispy, add in the corned beef. Stir it in and cook until some of the edges of that begin to brown.
If you’re making corned beef today, you need this recipe for your leftovers tomorrow! It’s tradition to make corned beef and cabbage (as well as potatoes, carrots, and soda bread: here’s my recipe for cheese soda bread) for St. Patrick’s Day at our house. One year I corned my own beef: you can see how … Read more
