Corned Beef Hash

I am in Roatan, Honduras right now which is why there haven't been any posts in awhile. I did decide to put this post up though because I was so fascinated by some of the things I learned! Why was I researching corned beef while in paradise? It all started with a very corny comment that I made this morning. I really couldn't help myself. My mom was inspecting the hash we had gotten for breakfast and was pondering out loud whether it was corned beef hash or regular beef hash. Jack asked how one would know. I had to go for it...I announced that this was regular beef hash because there was no corn in it. Rob asked if I was stupid. Clearly I was not as clever as I thought.

Anyway this made me wonder what makes beef corned. I checked www.kitchenproject.com/history to find out more. This site is fabulous for answering all of those I wonder why questions. It turns out that the term corned comes from a preservation method of putting beef in a large crock and covering it with big kernels of rock salt known as "corns of salt". This particular method sources back to Ireland, but the practice of salting meat itself goes back to ancient times. Corned beef was served at the inaugural dinner of Abe Lincoln along with parsley potatoes, mock turtle soup and blackberry pie.

The hash part comes from the verb "to hash" which means to chop up. Any ingredients can go into a hash, but typically it comes from leftover corned or roast beef, onions and potatoes.