Corned Beef Hash — The Kind of Food That Holds a Fire Together

Halloween weekend. Cole and Tara drove down Saturday. Tara is feeling well and she has the kind of seventeen-week glow that even men who do not believe in glows can see. She is wearing maternity clothes for the first time, although she only barely needs to, and there is a slight defiance in the wearing — like she is daring the universe to take this baby from her after the scare two weeks ago. The universe is not a thing you can dare. But you can stand in front of it in a flannel maternity shirt with one hand on your stomach, and that is what Tara has been doing all weekend.

Sunday I took her and Cole over to the new calf in the calf shed. The September baby. He is six weeks old now, smaller than the November weaners but smaller in proportion, not in soundness. He came up to the gate and let Tara scratch his head. Tara said, He is the same age as our baby — meaning the gestational age. I said, More or less. She said, Hello, little man. She said it twice. The calf looked at her the way calves look at something they are deciding about. He decided in her favor. She came back to the porch with her hand smelling of calf and she said, He is going to make it, right. I said, Yes. She said, Promise me. I said, I promise. I should not have. You do not promise about animals. You do not promise about babies. You can do everything right and the world can still take what it wants. But I promised her and I will keep the promise insofar as I can keep it, which means I will do the work and watch the calf and feed him hay and check on him in the cold, and the rest is not in my hands, and I will not promise that part because that part is not promiseable.

I shod five horses across three days. The Reagan place, Vera Halverson again, and a new ranch out in Big Timber. The Big Timber ranch is owned by a couple in their forties — recent transplants from California, third or fourth such couple I have shod for in two years — who have moved here with money and good intentions and who are learning, slowly, that Montana ranching does not run on intentions and sometimes does not run on money either. They are nice. They asked good questions. They paid me without quibbling. I shod three horses for them in five hours. I will go back in eight weeks. They will need help. They will not know how to ask for it because they are from California and admitting incompetence is not a Western trait but a small-town Western trait especially, and they will, in their first year, learn to admit it or they will fail. Either way I will be paid.

Halloween Thursday was quiet. We do not have trick-or-treaters out this far. The closest neighbor with kids is six miles away and they go into Roundup. Mom carved a pumpkin anyway and put it on the porch with a candle, and we ate beef stew Mom had made in the afternoon, and at nine I went out and looked at the stars and thought about Derek who would have been twenty-nine on Halloween next year. He was born November first, 1995. He used to get Halloween-themed birthday cards every year from his mother. He hated Halloween cards. He said it was the laziest thing in the world to send a man a Halloween card just because he was born the next day. I am thinking about him this week the way I think about him every week, which is to say constantly and quietly, with no drama and no resolution, just the noticing. He would be twenty-nine. I am thirty in five weeks. We have been apart for as long as we were friends now. The math is what it is.

Saturday cookout I made venison meatloaf, of all things. Half venison from a deer Tom Whelan had shot in October and given me a quarter of, half pork from a hog Cole had butchered in February. Eggs, breadcrumbs, sautéed onion, garlic, dried sage, a sauce on top of ketchup mixed with brown sugar and mustard and a splash of cider vinegar. It is what your grandmother made. It is also, when made with care, one of the great American foods. The men ate it. Vince said, This is the best meatloaf I have eaten in twenty years. I said, You probably ate a lot of bad meatloaf in those twenty years. He laughed. He said, Yes, I did. The fire was good. The meatloaf was good. Halloween was Halloween. Derek would have been twenty-nine next week. The fire helps.

The meatloaf was Saturday. Sunday morning, with Cole and Tara still at the house and the calf checked and the fire gone to ash, I made hash in the big cast iron — corned beef, potatoes, onion, whatever the pan would hold. It is the same logic as the meatloaf: you take what you have, you cook it with attention, and you put it in front of people who worked or worried or traveled to be at your table. Tara ate two servings. That felt like the right note to end the weekend on.

Corned Beef Hash

Prep Time: 10 min | Cook Time: 25 min | Total Time: 35 min | Servings: 4

Ingredients

• 1 can (15 oz) corned beef, or 2 cups leftover corned beef, chopped
• 3 medium russet potatoes, peeled and diced into 1/2-inch cubes
• 1 medium yellow onion, diced
• 1/2 medium green bell pepper, diced
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
• 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika
• Salt and black pepper to taste
• 4 eggs (optional, for serving)
• Fresh parsley, chopped (optional garnish)

Instructions

1. Par-cook the potatoes. Place diced potatoes in a saucepan, cover with cold salted water, and bring to a boil. Cook 5–6 minutes until just barely tender — not soft. Drain and set aside.
2. Heat the skillet. Melt butter with oil in a large cast iron skillet over medium-high heat until shimmering. A well-seasoned cast iron is worth everything here.
3. Cook the vegetables. Add onion and bell pepper. Cook 4–5 minutes, stirring occasionally, until softened and beginning to brown at the edges.
4. Add potatoes. Spread the par-cooked potatoes into the pan in an even layer. Press down lightly with a spatula. Let cook undisturbed for 4–5 minutes to develop a crust on the bottom.
5. Add the corned beef. Break the corned beef into the pan and fold it into the potato and onion mixture. Season with garlic powder, smoked paprika, salt, and pepper. Press everything into an even layer again.
6. Build the crust. Let cook undisturbed another 4–5 minutes. Flip sections with a spatula — you are not scrambling it, you are turning it to build crust on both sides. Repeat once or twice until the hash is deeply browned in places.
7. Serve. Plate immediately. Top each serving with a fried or poached egg if desired. Garnish with parsley. Eat while it’s hot.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 390 | Protein: 22g | Fat: 18g | Carbs: 34g | Fiber: 3g | Sodium: 870mg