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Corned Beef Hash

You'll need: Medium pot, Skillet or deep baking pan. Adapted for home kitchens by Halite from the U.S. War Department's Army Recipes (TM 10-412, 1946): scaled down from 100 servings, 1946 ingredients swapped for ones sold today, and the method rewritten. The recipe as printed is the Original version in this recipe's history.

6 servingsBy U.S. War Department on Army Recipes, TM 10-412 (1946)

Ingredients

  • 980g (2 ⅛ lb) Potatoes (unpeeled weight)
  • 170g (6 oz) Onions (unpeeled weight)
  • 27g (2 tbsp) Lard, or vegetable shortening or vegetable oil
  • 490g (1 ⅛ lb) Corned beef
  • 1.3g (¼ tsp) Pepper

Instructions

  1. 1

    Peel and dice the potatoes. Boil in water until tender, about 45 minutes. Drain, reserving some of the cooking water.

  2. 2

    Peel and chop the onions. Fry in the lard until they begin to color.

  3. 3

    Break up the corned beef and mix with the potatoes. Add the fried onions and pepper, then stir in enough of the reserved potato water to moisten the hash.

  4. 4

    For a small batch, brown the hash in the skillet on the stovetop until crusty. For a larger batch, spread it in the deep baking pan and bake in a hot oven (425°F) until a brown crust forms, about 45 minutes.

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Corned Beef Hash

100 servingsBy U.S. War Department on Army Recipes, TM 10-412 (1946)

Ingredients

  • 6 pounds (9 No. 56 dippers) Potatoes, dehydrated
  • 15 ½ quarts (15½ No. 56 dippers) Water (for potatoes)
  • 8 ounces (⅜ No. 56 dipper) Onions, dehydrated
  • 1 ¾ quarts (1¾ No. 56 dippers) Water (for onions)
  • 1 pound (½ No. 56 dipper) Lard
  • 18 pounds (3—6-pound cans) Corned beef
  • ¾ ounce (3 mess kit spoons) Pepper

Instructions

  1. 1

    Soak the potatoes for 40 to 60 minutes and then bring to a boil. Cook until tender. This should require about 45 minutes. Drain off the surplus water but do not discard it.

  2. 2

    Soak onions for 20 to 40 minutes and bring to a boil. Drain imme- diately. Do not discard the surplus onion water.

  3. 3

    Fry the drained, reconstituted onions in the lard until they begin to color.

  4. 4

    Break up the corned beef and mix with the potatoes. Add the fried onions and then follow with all of the surplus onion water and enough of the potato water to moisten the hash (most of it will be needed).

  5. 5

    When cooking small portions, brown the hash in a frying pan on top of the stove until it is crusty. For large quantities place the hash in a deep baking pan and bake in a hot oven for 45 minutes or until a brown crust is formed.

Typed from the page scan above. If the two disagree, go with the scan.

What we changed

  • Cut from the book’s 100 servings to 6 servings.
  • Swapped “Potatoes, dehydrated” for “Potatoes, fresh (unpeeled weight)”.
  • Swapped “Onions, dehydrated” for “Onions, fresh (unpeeled weight)”.
  • Scaled 5 amounts and rounded each to a kitchen measure, like ½ cup.
  • Fixed 4 fractions the scan of the 1946 page misread.
  • Tidied 2 ingredient names.
  • AI rewrote the method for a home kitchen. Tap As printed at the top to compare.

Taken from the log we keep of every edit to this recipe. We left out the line-by-line unit conversions.

Where this recipe comes from

It’s from Army Recipes (TM 10-412), the cookbook the U.S. War Department printed in 1946 for Army mess halls. As a U.S. government work, it’s in the public domain.

See the scanned book →

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