Category Archives: food rant

A Well-Considered Ranting Upon the Nature of Corned Beef Hash

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Guest Post by Talls

Note: there are so many links in this post, you guys.  SO MANY. Because hotlinking is non-cool. Please click through them all to fully enjoy this post.

When I was a kid I thought corned beef hash sounded like the worst food ever made. Obviously it involved some sort of corn, and some beef, and you smashed it up. Ugh. Gross.

Even as an adult it took me a while to try this stuff because, let’s face it, it still looks kind of gross. Then I tried some that wasn’t out of a can and it was fucking great and now apparently I’m some kind of goddamned corned beef hash evangelist.

So now I’m stuck in College Park, MD for another nine hours, which sounds like a doctor, but it is not, it is a town where they don’t believe in brunch at all and hardly even fucking believe in breakfast. This place is a blasted culinary wasteland until 4 PM. Thanks to that bullshit I have some extra fucking time on my hands, so let me explain to you corned-beef hash.

Because clearly there are people who need it explained.

Some people seem not to understand what corned beef hash actually is. And not in the way that most people don’t know why corned beef is called “corned”, which I’m not going to explain to you, you can find that shit out on your own, I am not your father. No, some people – people who run restaurants no less – seem to have deeper, inexplicable misunderstandings that, seriously, what the fuck.

This is what proper corned beef hash looks like:

(So pretty.)

As you can see, it has roughly equal amounts of corned beef and potatoes. It has small amounts of onions and red peppers. It has eggs on top of it, which is optional but recommended. It probably has salt and pepper and garlic and some thyme and oh my god I want this so bad this town has nothing for breakfast I’m so unhappy here all they have is a Denny’s why isn’t the plane leaving yet.

Ahem.

ANYway, those are the proper proportions. The corned beef should be lean. The potatoes should be in small pieces, and the corned beef should be in roughly the same size pieces. The whole thing should be made on a griddle or skillet or something, and not in a pot or in an oven. Cook the potatoes separately first and then combine, so they get crispy. This takes work, but it is not fucking rocket science. I can tell you this because I am a fucking rocket scientist, and NASA does not launch fucking corned beef into space. Any more.

Let me show you some things that are not quite proper corned beef hash:

Corned bullshit

No, that’s chopped-up corned beef, and hash browns. Note the unnecessary comma, which I added in because that is clearly fucking two separate things.

Corned carrots?

Food photography is hard, y’all. Are those carrots and cabbage? No. Don’t try to Irish this up.

Corned… the fuck?

Did you use mashed potatoes??

Corned batshit

The above shit is clearly Shepherd’s Pie.

Corned nothingness

That’s home fries with little bits of corned beef sprinkled in for flavoring. I mean, it looks ok, but someone’s trying to skimp on ingredients.

Corned falls, everyone dies.

Opposite problem.

Stop. Corning. POTATOES.

This, as previously indicated, is hash browns that someone waved some corned beef around.

Corned will not fit in any mouth.

I said small pieces. We are not making Extra-Fucking-Chunky Style here.

Corned twee

That’s not corned beef hash, that’s cutsie bullshit.

Corned unicorn beef?

Ok, that might be genius. You get a pass this time.

Corned lies

and

Corned damn lies

No, that is a fucking box and a can. The things inside are corned beef hash on a technicality, the way that jello and glue are both technically horses.

Corned betrayal

Stop. Just stop.

Corned statistics

What are you doing.

There are more images online – images too awful to show you here. Images that further erode my already-rock-fucking-bottom view of the world as a whole. It’s good to know that I always have more goodwill for humanity to erode. Seriously, don’t search Wikimedia Commons for corned beef hash. You will regret your life.

On the plus side, there are places out there that do get it. Even places that can’t figure out “cut things small” and “go easy on the thyme” generally end up with something delicious. Just try to screw up only one of these things at a time, ok? Corned beef hash is some good damned food. This is culinary alchemy here. Send a message back in time to Mini-Talls and tell him that, also also how to fucking time travel you inconsiderate douche.

Why is my plane not back in Boston yet?

Blue Star Cafe and Pub – Wallingford, WA

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Blue Star Cafe and Pub

 

I’ve returned, bitches! Enjoy some new food recs that have nothing to do with my usual geographic area. But if you end up in the Freemont/Wallingford area of Seattle because you’ve been kidnapped by octopi who get tired of carrying your whiny ass before they get to the amazing aquarium there, at least you’ll know where to get some damn good brunch.

Blue Star is right near Archie McPhee’s, which is a bizarre joke emporium that Talls and I did not go in to because we fail as human beings and hate everything fun. Seriously, they tweeted the mayor Seattle about getting the zoning for their parking lot changed to keep a unicorn, and the mayor tweeted back that he was all for it, so they named the damn single horned rainbow horse after him. Because. I despise myself.

Anyway, back to food. Originally I thought I was going to order one of their fucking amazing waffles, but they didn’t have real maple syrup. I need to learn to travel with a flask of that shit. Then, I planned to console myself with one of their massive cinnamon rolls, but they were all out. Fuck you Blue Star, don’t you understand that breakfast carbs are the source of my power!? So I had to “settle” for the Cabaret Scramble. I sobbed the entire time it took me to devour this savory deliciousness.

Sundried tomatoes, green & red peppers, fresh mushrooms, basil & garlic, topped with parmesan

Sundried tomatoes, green & red peppers, fresh mushrooms, basil & garlic, topped with parmesan

Woe is me! Talls subjected himself to two eggs over easy on top of a pile of corned beef hash, as he is wont to do. He commented early on that there was a ridiculous amount of thyme in his hash, and I had to agree. It was like some asshole in the kitchen played a loose spice shake top gag on the cook and he was so pissed he didn’t bother to make a fresh batch.

a mixture of our house corned beef, peppers & onions topped with 2 eggs any style

a mixture of our house corned beef, peppers & onions topped with 2 eggs any style

So while the coffee and orange juice was good, and the food I had to get in the end was good, Talls’ dish was way too thyme-y and they didn’t have the cinnamon buns their menu played up or any idea of what the fuck kind of syrup is supposed to be served with breakfast. Not the worst. Not the best. I declare this meh.

How to Brunch without Fucking Up

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A few easy tips and admonishments to improve your brunching experience:

  1. Know your area.  How can you know where the good restaurants are if you don’t?  Do some research to help expand your knowledge.  Places like The Internet can tell you a bajillion useful things, such as how awesome other people think your local diner is and that it closed three years ago.  Wandering around town and complaining about a lack of brunch places is not an acceptable substitute for this.
  2. Avoid the rush. One of the biggest complaints I’ve seen about brunch is that the wait is soooooo long because hipsters and their damn skinny jeans took my spot!  Dude, regardless of how tight the jeans on the forty people in front of you in line are, they are all there for the same reason: tasty food.  Do not go at peak brunch time (often a 11) and then bitch about other people wanting to eat.  Go back to the internet, see when the place opens, and next time go earlier or later.  Yelp posters will definitely tell you when no tables will be free just as surely as someone will give a great place one star because their water was only refilled fifty times.
  3. Know your allergies and dietary needs. Brunch is fab but very high in gluten, allergens, and meat.  Again, internet it and possibly call ahead if you have serious dining concerns to make sure your chosen restaurant can feed you safely as well as deliciously.
  4. Try new shit. I know my other points can be boiled down to “Seriously, look at the internet first,” but this one lies within each of us.  Loosen up.  Try a new place.  Try a new meal!  Be prepared to love it, hate it, or forever have a new embarrassing story to tell you friends. Go as slow as blueberry and banana pancakes or all the way to the french toast burger.  But seriously, try something new every so often.

And for the love of challah, stop complaining about things that you can easily fix with the supercomputer in your pocket.

I Have Maple-Flavored Feelings

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There are a million things that can go wrong in the world, and many of them occur at brunch.  Long lines, small tables, and non-perfect food.  No one eats breakfast/lunch food out if it’s not going to be perfect, guys.  We can all make pancakes and sandwiches, can’t we?  If we wanted non-perfect food, we’d stay home.  We go out to brunch for the awesome.  For the amazing.  For the they-really-put-all-those-things-in-one-thing? turning out to be the BEST FOODSTUFF EVER.  Or maybe we just go out for really good eggs in the company of hipsters and kitsch.

Regardless, as a New Englander I feel strongly that the worst brunch faux pass is not having real maple syrup.

High fructose corn syrup with “maple flavoring” is NOT maple syrup people.  For some, it is a travesty because corn subsidies and it makes you fat or whatever else.  This is not my point.  Mine is that maple syrup is the nectar of the breakfast gods and I refuse to eat your dry-ass pancakes without some liquid nirvana making them palatable.  Real syrup upgrades BACON.  I come to brunch for many things, but first among them is the boiled-down blood of the sugar maple.  If I am not one step away from being a tree vampire, it is not brunch time.  That makes it lunch time, because at least with a grilled cheese sandwich I do not feel inherently betrayed by the lack of syrup.  I am also not a fan of paying extra for real syrup, but as long as it’s not five bucks I’ll do it because I know the good stuff costs.

Also: Grade B is the best grade and we other New England states have let Vermonters pull the maple wool over our eyes for too long.  And they know their syrup.  They want fake syrup passed off as the real thing to be a prosecutable offense.