Red Flannel Hash — The Saturday Breakfast from the Last of the Thanksgiving Turkey

The first hard frost hit Broken Arrow on Monday morning, and I want to start there because the frost is the line between fall and the next season, and we crossed it this week. I walked to the bus stop at six-fifty and the windshield of the Hendersons’ Buick had a thin sheet of white on it, and my breath was a small white cloud in front of my face for the first time this season. The maple in front of their house has dropped most of its leaves; the leaves are stuck to the lawn in a wet brown carpet under the frost. The honeysuckle on our back fence is brown sticks. Winter is six days from official, and is already arriving early.

Day fifty-two of ninety. Thirty-eight days to sentencing. I want to write down what happened Tuesday because Tuesday was Cody’s second probation check-in with Ms. Ellis and the news was the kind of news we needed. Ms. Ellis told Cody, in the meeting at the Probation Department on Sheridan, that he was doing well. That he should keep showing up the way he has been showing up. That the report she is going to write for the judge is going to reflect what she has been seeing — a young man at his job every day, in regular contact with his family, in church on Sundays, completing the fifteen hours of community service he has logged so far at the food pantry at First Baptist on Saturdays.

Cody told me this on the porch Wednesday afternoon when we were both home for a few minutes between his shift and mine. He had taken his work shirt off and was standing in his t-shirt with his arms crossed against the cold and he said, she said the report is going to be good, Kay. I said, that is what we want. He said, I know. And then he said something else I want to keep on the page, something I have not heard him say before. He said, Mr. Garcia let me do primer on a Camaro yesterday. I think I might actually be good at this, Kay.

I want to write that sentence down because it was the first time my brother has said the words I think I might be good at this about anything in two years. He has been a person, since the pills started, who did not say things about himself in the future tense. He has been a person who said things about himself only in the past tense, and only the bad parts. The shift on the porch Wednesday, in the cold, in his t-shirt, with his arms crossed, was a person who had started saying things about himself in the future tense again. I am keeping the sentence in the green notebook in pen.

And then there is the recipe, which is the small kitchen story I want to balance the bigger ones with this week. I made red flannel hash Saturday morning from the last of the Thanksgiving leftovers, and I want to walk you through it because I had never heard of red flannel hash before this fall, and I have decided it is going on my permanent rotation list as the recipe to make the Saturday morning after a holiday with a roast.

Red flannel hash, if you have not had it, is a New England diner classic. The version I learned about is from A Family Feast. The recipe is leftover roasted meat (turkey or corned beef or roast beef), diced potatoes, diced beets, and onion, all sauteed together in a cast iron skillet until the bottom develops a deep brown crust, served with eggs on top. The beets are the part that makes it red flannel. The beets are also the part that I want to defend, because canned beets are a vegetable I have noticed people sneer at, and the people who sneer at canned beets have not eaten them in red flannel hash, and I want to put on the page that canned beets fried into a hash are one of the most satisfying things I have eaten this fall.

The math: I had a half cup of leftover turkey, white meat, diced — the last of the Thanksgiving turkey, free since I had already paid for it. Three small russet potatoes, peeled and diced into half-inch cubes, $0.45 from the bag. A 15-ounce can of sliced beets, drained well and diced, $0.79 at Aldi. Half a small yellow onion, fine-chopped, $0.10. Salt, pepper, dried thyme, two tablespoons of butter, a tablespoon of olive oil. Six eggs (two for each person), $0.60. Two slices of toasted bread per person from the loaf on the counter. Total cost of breakfast for three: about $1.80. The cheapest hot breakfast I have made all year, and one of the best.

The technique is the part I want to put down because the technique is what separates good hash from sad hash. The trick is the not-stirring. I am going to repeat it because I had to learn it the hard way the first time I tried hash six months ago and it came out as a soft potato-and-onion mush. The trick is the not-stirring.

You dice all the ingredients to roughly the same size, half-inch cubes. You heat the butter and oil together in a large cast-iron skillet over medium-high heat until the butter foams and starts to brown. You add the diced potatoes first, alone, and you season with salt and pepper, and you press them flat against the bottom of the skillet with the back of a spatula, and you do not stir for five full minutes. You let the potatoes develop a brown crust on the bottom. After five minutes you flip large sections with the spatula — not stir, flip — and press flat again, and do not touch them for three more minutes. The potatoes by this point are mostly tender, with crust on multiple sides.

You add the onion, the diced beets, the diced turkey, and the dried thyme. You stir once to combine. You press the whole thing flat against the skillet again. You leave it alone for four more minutes. Then you flip large sections one more time and let the new bottom crust for three more minutes. The whole hash takes about fifteen minutes of cooking and four total flips. The discipline is the not-stirring between flips.

While the hash is finishing, you fry six eggs over-easy in a separate small skillet. The yolks should still be runny.

You plate the hash on three plates. You top each plate with two over-easy eggs. You serve with toast on the side. The egg yolks break when you cut into them and run down into the hash. The colors on the plate are the brick-red of the beets, the brown of the potato crust, the white of the egg whites, the gold-orange of the yolks running, the brown of the toast next to it. The plate looks like a diner plate at six in the morning on a Saturday in 1958.

Cody had two plates Saturday. Mama said, sitting at the table at nine in the morning in her robe, Kaylee, this is the kind of breakfast my mama’s diner served when I was eight years old. I had not known Grandma Carol had ever worked at a diner. Mama said, oh, baby, my mama waited tables at the Lone Star Cafe in 1962 when she was nineteen, before she met your grandfather. She used to bring home a hash exactly like this one in a foil container at the end of her shift and we would eat it Saturday morning the way we are eating it now.

I am writing that down. Grandma Carol at the Lone Star Cafe in 1962 at nineteen years old, bringing home red flannel hash in a foil container at the end of a Saturday shift. I have her recipes in the box in the back of Mama’s closet. I do not have her hash. The hash I made on Saturday was a diner recipe from the internet. The fact that the recipe lined up with a hash my grandmother had brought home in 1962 is, I have decided, the kind of small accidental rhyme that this notebook is for. The recipes find their way back home.

The X marks on the calendar are at fifty-two. Thirty-eight days to go. The frost held overnight Monday and Tuesday. The leaves are mostly down. The hash was good. We are still here. We are still working for the deferred. We are going to make it.

The recipe is below, the way A Family Feast wrote it. The trick I want you to keep is the not-stirring — press the hash flat in the skillet and let it develop a crust. Move it only when it has been still long enough to crust. Hash without a crust is just diced vegetables. Hash with a crust is hash. The canned beets are the right beets for this. Do not let anybody talk you out of canned beets in a red flannel hash.

Red Flannel Hash

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 20 min | Total Time: 35 min | Servings: 4

Ingredients

• 2 cups cooked beets, peeled and diced into 1/2-inch cubes
• 2 cups cooked potatoes, diced into 1/2-inch cubes (russets or Yukon gold)
• 1 cup cooked meat, diced or shredded (leftover pulled pork, corned beef, or roast)
• 1 small yellow onion, finely diced
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 tablespoons butter or neutral oil
• 1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika
• 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon salt, or to taste
• 4 eggs, optional (for serving)
• Fresh parsley, chopped, for garnish (optional)

Instructions

1. Prep your ingredients. Dice the cooked beets, potatoes, and meat into roughly equal-sized pieces so everything crisps evenly. Pat the beets dry with a paper towel — this helps them brown rather than steam.
2. Soften the aromatics. Heat butter or oil in a large cast-iron or heavy skillet over medium heat. Add the diced onion and cook for 4–5 minutes, stirring occasionally, until softened and translucent. Add the garlic and cook for 30 seconds more.
3. Build the hash. Add the diced potatoes to the skillet and press them down gently with a spatula. Cook undisturbed for 3–4 minutes until a golden crust forms on the bottom. Stir, then add the beets and meat. Season with smoked paprika, salt, and black pepper.
4. Crisp and finish. Press the mixture flat again and let it cook undisturbed for another 4–5 minutes to develop a crust. Give it one final stir, taste for seasoning, and cook 2 more minutes. The beets will turn everything a deep, rusty red — that’s the “red flannel.”
5. Add eggs if using. Create 4 small wells in the hash, crack an egg into each, cover the skillet with a lid, and cook over medium-low heat for 3–4 minutes until whites are set but yolks are still runny.
6. Serve. Dish up straight from the skillet, garnished with fresh parsley if you have it. Eat immediately while it’s hot.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 285 | Protein: 13g | Fat: 11g | Carbs: 34g | Fiber: 4g | Sodium: 470mg