It seemed like the thing to do, make hash from most of the leftover corned beef. I have never made corned beef hash before.....I rescued the remaining veg from last night, chopped up the potatoes and carrots and then realized I would need a lot more "stuff" to make a meal of it. I chopped an onion and a couple of small potatoes and took the eggs out of the fridge.
I heated a pan and added the onion. When it softened up a bit, I then added the raw potatoes. Lidded it and went to do something else. In returning to the pan, the onions looked lovely, but the potatoes were still quite raw. How do you solve that? I figured I needed to steam them so I added 1/2 c of water to the pan, lidded it up again and did something else. Returning I found they were still very firm, so another 1/2 c of water and closed it up again. All of this is happening over 15-20 minutes or so. On the third check, the potatoes were almost done, so they would finish up when I added the rest of the stuff.
Into the pan went the cooked veg and the diced up corned beef. I lidded it and got out a smaller frying pan to poach the eggs. In thinking about the eggs, I was longing for a poached one. So that's what Bill got too! I filled the pan with water, added a couple of T of white distilled vinegar and a pinch or two of salt. I left it on a low heat because I didn't want to fight waiting for a rolling boil to simmer down. I turned my attention to the eggs. How was I going to get them into the pan so that they didn't spread all over. Aha! I got out 4 small metal bowls, contemplating should I cook the eggs directly in the little bowls. I decided against that idea, and cracked and put one egg into each little bowl.
I checked on the hash again, smashed up some of the bigger chunks of meat and mixed things together. I didn't salt because the meat was pretty salty on its own, but I did pepper things liberally. I hash was sticking to the bottom of the pan. I could scrape it up easily, so back to the water and I added a couple of splashed over the heavily browned spots and began to scrape them in earnest. As soon as it came up in one spot, it got crusted over in another. I decided to add about 1/4 c stir it around, and lid again and lowered the heat, hoping that the steam would loosen up the crusty bits. It worked!
Now was time for the eggs. I stirred the water in a circle to get a whirlpool going, but not a really strong one, and tipped in the first egg. The white spread a tiny bit, but I coaxed it back into place, I nudged the egg from the bottom so it wouldn't stick, and repeated the process 3 more times.
I used a slotted spoon to remove an egg and placed it on a wad of folded up paper towel to absorb any vinegary water that was clinging to the egg. Put them into a dish and, voila, we had dinner ready.
 |
| corned beef hash |
 |
| poached eggs |
