A little something to tide you over...

B & O Espresso

Now that we've laid the ground rules and have a starting point for these reviews, why don't we get to work, eh? So B & O was the very first recommendation I got from a reader, and as such, will be the first to undergo my intense scrutiny.

We hit B & O on a Friday afternoon (thank god for all-day breakfast menus, btw), once my work had settled down. Nothing like easing into a snowy weekend than with a heaping plate of hash. Anyone who's ever been to B & O will tell you that the atmosphere is great--very laid back with a not-annoying Parisian vibe--and the coffee and desserts are fantastic. But what about the corned beef hash?

Well, not too shabby, I'd say. As far as consistency goes, these guys could have been a bit crispier on the outside, and the corned beef was nearly indiscernible from the potatoes. I'm all about mushiness in some foods, but not corned beef hash (which always walks that fine line between perfect crispiness and dog food mush). I quite enjoy being able to tell the meat from the potatoes on a purely tactile level.

Aesthetically, this was a pretty run-of-the-mill plate of hash. The poached eggs were perched nicely atop the hash and sprinkled with pepper and spices. The square plate was a nice touch, but overall, nothing to call home about. The eggs were done well, but the toast was already cold when it got to me.

The overall flavor of the dish was a bit on the bland side, possibly due to the over-mingling of the corned beef and the potatoes. I had to salt it a bit, which you really shouldn't have to do to a dish that by definition is preserved in salt. On the plus side, the hash wasn't greasy or too heavy, and the corned beef was pretty mild (sometimes it can get a little, shall we say, ripe).

And as far as the Kelly P Factor (previously know as "the wife factor") goes, B & O's hash scored a 3 (out of 5) on Kelly P's Patented Palatability Scale. Her one sentence synopsis went thusly: "Where's the beef?" Succinct, no?

So all in all, I'm giving B & O a score of


Stay tuned for more corned beef hash reviews from around our fair city, as well as up-to-the-minute corned beef hash news (should there ever be any).

-A.W. Hilst

Baseline

As with any successful experiment, it is important to have a controlled variable, a baseline with which one can measure all other variables. My baseline is Hormel Homestyle Corned Beef Hash. Since it had been awhile--possibly 10 years--since I had this dish, I thought I'd make some for breakfast yesterday, complete with a poached egg. My first instinct when I picked up the can of hash at the grocery store was to look at the nutrition facts. Bad idea! With just one serving (there are 3 per can) I'd be getting over half of my daily recommended allowance of saturated fat. I wondered to mysefl if I should start another blog in tandem with this one that tracks my blood pressure from week to week. Anyhow, I digress...


Nutrition be damned, I proceeded to dollop a spoonful of dog food-like hash into the skillet and turn on the fan above the stove. Our kitchen was still airing out from Thanksgiving's ritual frying of sausage for stuffing, and I know that hash packs a pungent odor.




Simultaneously, I began my attempt at poaching an egg. This was my first time, and I had decided to use the "swirl" method, which I read about on the internets. In order to do this, you have to create a vortex in the simmering pot of water, and then crack the egg into the eye of the storm. It took two people to successfully complete the whole process, but the egg turned out pretty all right, if not a little overcooked.



Once the hash was fried sufficiently, I pulled it from the skillet and topped it off with the poached egg and some green onions for color. All in all, it smelled a little pungent, and had a dull, disconcerting glisten, but how would it taste?

Not surprisingly, exactly how I remembered it. The potatoes were mushy, the meat a tad bit gritty, and overall, a bit too greasy for my liking. The whole time I was eating it, I was thinking to myself, "This shouldn't be too hard for a restaurant to top!" Hopefully I'm right.


This brings us to the most important part of today's little experiment: setting the criteria for reviews. After all was said and done (or eaten, as the case may be), I've decided to judge the dishes based on five categories: consistency, flavor, aesthetics, accoutrement, and the ever-important Kelly P Factor--wherein my wife, Kelly P, who does not like corned beef hash at all takes one bite and gives me a one sentence summary and a 0-5 rating. Once that is all taken into account, I'll give the dish a score of 0-5 skillets, 5 being the highest.

So, stay tuned for tomorrow's first official review of B&O's corned beef hash. It will be enthralling and inspiring.

Best,
A.W. Hilst

Doubling Up

Just realized that I should really set some sort of baseline before I start tasting the professionally made corned beef hash dishes. So, I'm off to the store for some good old Hormel for breakfast, and then to the B&O for lunch. Stay tuned for the results and many action packed photos!

Just the Facts

While I'm hashing out the criteria for my first review (B&O, Friday), I thought it might be good to get up to speed on the history of corned beef hash, and corned beef in general. The miraculous little website The Food Timeline has already done some digging, so I'll let them do the heavy lifting:

According to The Encyclopedia of North American Eating and Drinking Traditions..., Kathlyn Gay [ABC-CLIO:Santa Barbara] 1996 (p. 70) "The word 'hash' (fried odds-and-ends dish) came into English in the mid-17th century from the old French word 'hacher', meaning to chop. Corned beef hash...probably has its origins in being a palatable combination of leftovers. In the 19th century, restaurants serving inexpensive meals--precursors to today's diners--became known as "hash houses." By the early 1900s, corned beef hash was a common menu item in these places. Link

This aligns nicely with the previously discussed food vernacular at my grandma's house, specifically with regard to the many fond memories I have of meals consisting of solely "palatable combination[s] of leftovers." Grandma would store her leftovers in Fire-King containers, the pre-cursor to Tupperware that she still uses to this day, and on leftover nights, she would neatly unstack the containers on the kitchen counter and we'd all have a go at whatever was still hanging around in the fridge. Mashed potatoes and beef brisket were common dishes, but never did we actually do any of our own "hashing."

Corned beef, as it were, refers to beef preserved or brined with salt. The usage of "corn" as a verb can be traced back to 888, according to the Oxford English Dictionary (via, Wikipedia) and "corned beef" dates back to 1621. Corned beef is generally made of one of the less tender cuts of meat, including brisket (shout out to Grandma!) and takes a lot of cooking time to make palatable.

So, there's your corned beef hash primer for the day. I'll continue to seek out the tastiest corned beef fun facts, and will be sure to relay them to you as time goes on.

Best,
A.W. Hilst

Suggestion Box

Thanks to the intrepid readers over at my home-town blog Capitol Hill Seattle I now have my first purveyor of hash, er, hashed out. Look out B&O, I'm headed your way! Do you have a favorite hashery in Seattle that you wouldn't mind divulging? Leave me a comment letting me know the name of the restaurant and I'll add it to my list.

Thanks!

A Bit(e) of History

Welcome to Hash Things Out, your new favorite over-specific regional corned beef hash information and review repository.

Let's just start this whole thing off by saying that as a child I was regularly fed Hormel Brand Canned Corned Beef (see photo), direct from my grandmother's pantry. I can't say I recall the first time I was served hash, but I definitely remember how this meal fit in quite well with the food vernacular at my grandma and grandpa's house. Alongside dishes like Miracle Whip and braunschweiger sandwiches and Karo Syrup on toast, canned corned-beef hash was par for the course. Nothing ever struck me as odd about these foods.

Recently, I have had an overwhelming urge to order corned beef hash while dining out for breakfast (likely some sort of quarter-to-mid-life attempt to hold on to my childhood), and each time I have submitted to that urge, I have found that people's (or, restaurants', really) perception of what makes up corned beef hash varies wildly. My own Hormel-splattered perceptions of corned beef hash seemed like a good jumping off point for an in-depth food study. Hence, Hash Things Out, a blog about corned beef hash.

Throughout the life of this study, I'd like to accomplish a few things:

1. Provide reviews of and insight into the Pacific Northwest's best corned beef hash
2. Classify and categorize the countless varieties of corned beef hash
3. Explore my own palette and why I've come to enjoy some of the food that I love

I hope someone somewhere finds this interesting, or at least entertaining. If you do, leave me a comment. I'll try to blog as much as I can, but for now, expect one photo-laden review per week and possibly some sporadic corned beef hash-related interstitials.

Happy Hashing,
A.W. Hilst