If you have a busy life and a limited budget, finding cheap and easy meals to make for the family is essential. One of the easiest and cheapest meals to make is corned beef hash. It is something I make for the family when I am really busy, as it doesn’t take long, and the kids love this dish.
It is a hearty and warming meal you can make at any time of the year, and you can easily adapt it to suit your tastes. Corned beef hash is also one of the quickest recipes containing meat, as many meat dishes take time to cook properly.
Our corned beef hash recipe is a traditional British dish. It was particularly popular during wartime when fresh meat was expensive and many foods were subject to rationing. During this period, many people would cook with food from tins, which is another reason for the dish’s popularity during the war.
My grandmother was quite a traditional British home cook, so this dish was part of her regular culinary repertoire. My earliest memory of the dish is eating it for tea after school at my grandma’s house, and I found it a comforting and filling meal to eat. More recently, it has become one of my middle son’s favourite teatime meals, and it was his choice for his birthday meal.
Here is how to make a quick and easy corned beef hash. (Image credit: Bodhi Peace, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)
Corned Beef Hash- Easy Recipe
Course: Recipes, Recipes with MeatCuisine: BritishDifficulty: Easy6
servings10
minutes30
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A recipe for corned beef, a classic British dish that is cheap and easy to make.
Ingredients for the Corned Beef Hash Recipe
2 tins of corned beef
A large onion, chopped
1 kg white potatoes
2 tbsp gravy granules
Salt and pepper to season
Directions: How to Make Corned Beef Hash
- Peel the potatoes and dice them into small cubes.
- Add the potatoes to a pan of salted water and bring to a boil.
- While the potatoes are cooking, finely chop a large onion and dice the contents of a tine of corned beef.
- Put a frying pan over medium heat and add oil before adding the onions.
- Cook the onions until they are softened and brown, and then add the corned beef to the pan.
- Drain most of the water from the pan when the potatoes have softened (check with a fork). You will need a little if you want some gravy in your corned beef hash.
- Transfer the potatoes and the remaining water to the frying pan and mix into the corned beef and onions.
- Sprinkle over the gravy granules and season the dish with pepper.
- Cook the ingredients together for a further five minutes before serving.
Additional Tips
- Leftovers: If you have any leftover corned beef hash, do not throw it away. Instead, refrigerate it overnight and use it the next day to make delicious homemade corned beef fritters.
- Add vegetables: I sometimes like adding peas or chopped carrots to the hash. Add the carrots to the potatoes to boil, or add some peas at the same time as the corned beef.
- Texture: If you put the dish/ pan in the oven on high heat for 10 minutes, the top of the hash will go crunchy.
- Serving: I usually serve this with peas and some pickled red cabbage or beetroot. My partner and kids also like sliced bread and butter with this dish.
- Crust: Sometimes, I add a shortcrust topping to the hash and cook it in the oven. Ideal for pie lovers!
Did you enjoy our corned beef hash recipe? Let us know your thoughts below. Likewise, add a comment if you know another way to make the dish or have any adaptations to suggest. We love to hear new ideas to improve our recipes and allow our readers to try new things.