Reprint: Making the Most of the Corned Beef and Cabbage

Here's an old article that's timely today -- even the right day of the week!

Here is is, Wednesday, and we're still getting great meals out of Sunday's early St. Patrick's Day dinner of corned beef and cabbage. Monday night I made Corned Beef Hash, and boy, was it great! Here's how:

I chopped a medium onion, and started it sauteing in a tablespoon or so of butter, over low-medium heat -- used my big cast iron skillet.

While that was happening, I diced a generous half-pound of leftover corned beef, and about a cup and a quarter of the leftover turnips. I also chopped up some of the leftover celery that had cooked along with them. When the onion was getting soft, I stirred in the corned beef, turnips, and celery. I dosed the mixture well with Worcestershire -- maybe a tablespoon and a half -- and mixed everything up well.

Then I sprinkled a tablespoon of dry Ketatoes mix (again, you could use Dixie Diners Instant Mashers mix the same way) over the hash, and stirred it in. I repeated this three more times, adding a total of four tablespoons (a quarter-cup) of the Ketatoes.

Then I patted my hash out evenly over the bottom of the skillet, and set a timer for 13 minutes. (Why 13? I dunno. Ten seemed too short, 15 seemed like pushing it.) Went away and did other things. When the timer went off, I used a pancake turner to turn the mass of hash over, plowing the brown crust that was forming back into the whole. Set the timer again, and went away again. Repeated the stirring and scraping of the brown layer. Set the timer once more, at which point we decided we were starving and couldn't resist any more. The hash was wonderful.

I worked out the numbers. We got three servings, so each had about: 369 Calories; 24g Fat ; 22g Protein; 18g Carbohydrate; 7g Dietary Fiber, 11 grams usable carb. By way of comparison, 1 cup of canned corned beef hash has 34 grams of carb; I couldn't find a fiber count.

That Nice Boy I Married claimed the leftover hash for yesterday's lunch, so I had a slice or two of corned beef warmed up with some leftover cabbage. But for dinner, I made a great soup:

I chopped up all the leftover cabbage, turnips (most of which had gone in the hash), celery, corned beef, all of it, and put it in a big saucepan with the quart of leftover cooking liquid I had saved from the Crockpot(tm). Put it over a medium-high burner.

When it was hot, I stirred in 8 1-ounce slices of processed, pasteurized Swiss Cheese singles. Yes, it had more carbs than real Swiss cheese, but all told it added 8 grams to the whole batch of soup. And I didn't wind up running cheese boogers through my blender. It was cheaper than real Swiss cheese, too, and the budget's tight right now. I also stirred in a cup of half-and-half. I added a little xanthan from my shaker, till the whole thing was about heavy cream consistency.

Seasoned it with about a tablespoon of grated horseradish, and a couple of teaspoons of spicy brown mustard, plus some Vege-Sal and pepper. And it was marvelous! Even better warmed up for lunch today, when we have freezing rain here in Southern Indiana -- and there's still at least a couple of servings left.

I didn't measure, but using my best guesstimates, this has 285 calories, 20 grams of protein, 8 grams of carb, 1 gram of fiber per serving, so 7 grams usable carb. And so good! I will definitely make this again.