Now that I’m retired, I have taken over a lot of the cooking. When our kids were small, my wife did 90% of the meal preparation, but I did certain holidays, like Thanksgiving and St. Patrick’s Day. I did the latter because we would make our corned beef and cabbage meal in a pressure cooker, a tool my wife is a bit uncomfortable with.

In the US, we waste almost 40% of the food that we buy. That is an expensive habit now that we have to deal with inflation, the Trump tariffs taxes, and fuel shortages due to the Iran war.

When our kids were young, they might eat part of a piece of corned beef and a small amount of vegetables. This meant that quite a bit of the dinner was left over. I’m big on not wasting food, but what to do? Repeat the meal the next day? A casserole? I went with option “C,” homemade corned beef hash.

I “winged” a recipe, but it turned out well. In fact, homemade corned beef hash has become a tradition that my kids look forward to. I’ll fry up the hash along with some sunny-side-up eggs, toast made from homemade bread, and (on occasion) fried potatoes as a “breakfast for dinner” meal.

This year, my kids will be visiting us the weekend after St. Pat’s Day. My daughter has already told me that she is looking forward to our traditional hash and eggs dinner. I’ll be very busy this weekend, so I had to do a little pre-planning. I’ll explain that in the photos.

As an aside, this year I made our corned beef in a slow cooker. I posted the recipe and wanted to make the preparation as accessible as possible. More people have slow cookers than Instant Pots. The corned beef turned out great, and the only difference that I could tell was the cooking time. Cooking corned beef in a pressure cooker takes around 90 minutes. Cooking corned beef in a slow cooker takes around 8 hours. However, the end products are identical.

Let’s get into this extremely simple recipe.

Here is the leftover corned beef. Don’t trim off the fat, it is an important part of the recipe.

Cut the corned beef into chunks.

It is easiest to make the hash in a food processor. You want a 50/50 mix of vegetables and corned beef. However, the exact proportions are not that important, so just eyeball it. I’m adding the leftover cooked potatoes, onions, and carrots. I’m also adding a small amount of the leftover cabbage. The cabbage is optional, but I like the additional flavor. Add the corned beef chunks to the vegetables, leaving the processor about half full. Then pulse the mixture until it looks like hash. Don’t overfill the processor, or you’ll get an uneven chop.

Our very old food processor is relatively small (7 or 8 cups) so I did the chopping in several batches.

This is the consistency that you want. Remember, pulse. Otherwise, you will turn the corned beef hash into mush.

As you can see, we made quite a bit of hash. Total prep time? Less than 5 minutes.

I made our dinner on Wednesday, and I won’t fry up the hash until Sunday. It would probably be fine in the fridge, but I would prefer it to be as delicious as possible. Therefore, I decided to vacuum seal the corned beef. Doing this will keep it fresh in the fridge at least twice as long. If I froze it, vacuum-sealing would keep it fresh for up to a year (or more).

Here is the hash after vacuum-sealing it. I like to flatten out the bags as they are easier to store. I’m not sure how many of my kids are staying for dinner. If they are all here, I’ll make both bags. Otherwise, I’ll freeze one for a quick future “breakfast for dinner.”

I believe that my kids prefer the hash dinner to the traditional boiled one. Turning the leftovers into hash not only prevents food waste but also creates a completely different meal. And my homemade hash is so much better than the hash-in-a-can stuff. Give it a try!

Peace

Mike