Winter Dinner: Hash is the Greatest

I have So Many Pictures for today’s recipe. I’m pretty excited. Just so you’re prepared ahead of time: it’s gonna be graphic.

So, everyone everywhere is trapped in the Endless Winter, discovering that we’re all apparently Sweet Summer Children and that all other winters were only pretending. This, I think, calls for a nice, warm dinner that can likely be cobbled together from whatever is already in the house. Even better, this recipe pops in the oven for a bit at the end – meaning that you get to dart around a Nice, Warm Kitchen while the oven is preheating and soak up all the extra warm.  I should note, also, that I’m pretty certain this recipe could be easily modified to work on a wood-burning stove – just cover it up at the end and be patient while the eggs finish.

But that, I suppose, is Jumping Ahead. Back to square one, then: let me tell you what you need for this Hash:

• 1/2 lb. breakfast sausage, or Italian sausage, seasoned ground pork, or seasoned ground beef. You might bump this up to a whole pound if you’re aiming to serve more than two or three, or if the eaters are particularly carnivorous in inclination.
• olive oil, in the order of about 1/8 c (2 T).
• potatoes, about one per total serving – I started with three medium-sized potatoes.
• salt and pepper – If I don’t say otherwise, I always mean kosher salt, and I always mean fresh ground black pepper.
• carrots, along the same order, plus one for the pot – four for me in this recipe.
• onions, 1/2 – 1 whole, depending on your taste. I used red onion because I like the pop of color.
• garlic, as much as you like – five cloves, for me, in this recipe.
• dried thyme or rosemary – or both, if you like, about 3/4 – 1 tsp, total.
• Eggs, one per serving. I used duck eggs, because I had them and they’re so comforting.
• Sriracha and/or ketchup, if you’re me. Lots of other topping possibilities out there, I suppose. But really: Sriracha.

Ok, so you’ve got your things together. If you are cooking from an ice-in, and don’t have one thing or another, I suppose I should note that this is pretty flexible so long as you’ve got a cooking oil, potatoes, and some kind of seasoning. Mind, if you don’t have eggs, I’m not calling it a Hash. But it’ll be good cooked up and topping polenta or grits or pasta, anyway, so who cares what I call it?

And so, Your Procedure.

1. Preheat the oven to 350.
2. Get the sausage cooking in a medium saucepan over medium heat – just big enough that the meat has plenty of room. I used breakfast sausage and just let it crumble, because I was partly trying to use up some Odds and Ends. There’s no reason why you couldn’t use slices of Italian sausage, though, or cook up some ground pork or beef and season it to your tastes. This is one of the only steps I don’t have a picture for, because there are few things Less Appealing than raw ground meat.
3. While the meat is cooking, scrub the potatoes and slice them into 1/2 – 3/4 in. cubes. I suggest not peeling them; they feel Heartier that way. But if you hate peels, so be it.
4. Check the sausage – if it is done, drain it and set aside. If not, keep an eye on it throughout the following steps and pause to pull it whenever necessary.
5. Heat the olive oil in a Nice, Heavy, Oven-Safe Pan over medium-high heat. Once the oil is hot (I always use the Teensy Drop of Water Test, because I’m reckless like that), turn the heat down to about a notch below medium and add the potatoes, all at once.  Salt and pepper to taste, and then maybe pepper a bit more.
   

   Here are all of those potatoes, happily sizzling away in the olive oil. I used, as you can see, my cast iron Dutch oven, because (1) it is certainly happy to cooperate either on the stove-top or in the oven, and (2) I Just Like It.

6. While the potatoes are cooking, scrub the carrots (peel them If You Must) and cut them into about 1/2 inch pieces – usually this means rounds for the bottom half and half-moons for the top. Slice the onions into thin half moons – no more than 1/4 in. thick, and 1/8 is better. Mince the garlic or, if you’re feeling a bit lazy, just push it through a garlic press. (I am often feeling a Bit Lazy). This, by the by, is where you could most easily make substitutions, either to accommodate what you have in the house or to vary the recipe once you’re comfortable with it. My suggestions for Substitution Veggies would include celery, fennel (nom), beets, and parsnips, for starters. You could also use frozen veggies, in a pinch, but the Final Result will be…Mushier.
7. About the time you’re done with this prep, the potatoes should be looking golden-y, at which point you can dump all the new veggies in to the pan. Stir them all together so they’re all nicely coated with oil, and let them cook for about 15 min. The veggies to keep an eye on are the carrots (or parsnips or beets, if you’ve used them – and if you do, it’s not a bad idea to parboil them first). You want them to Yield, but not be Mushy.
   

   Look at the colors! I am enamored of these veggies. By the by, you’ll note that I’m using a wooden spoon in this picture. I actually Do Not Recommend this, since you’ll be adding meat momentarily – at which point, I was clever enough to switch over to a spatula, but Alas! I had already unnecessarily dirtied a spoon.

8. Once you’ve got a good consistency on whatever your Stubbornest Vegetable is, add your cooked meat and your herbs. I’ll usually stick with dried herbs in winter and fresh in summer, but I try to note which I mean. This time, I used dried thyme and rosemary, in about equal portions.
   

   Here are almost all of the ingredients, getting to know each other, as well as that plastic spatula.

9. Stir everything together, turn the heat to low, and let everything mingle for about 5-10 min, depending on how hungry you are.
10. Crack the eggs on top of your hash, and move the Whole Operation to the oven. If you’re planning on leftovers, I suggest saving those eggs until the day of; it shouldn’t take much longer, and you’ll be happier with the final result. Warmed over eggs are Not Pleasant, in my opinion.
    

    Thus, my pan was home to only one egg for this round of the cooking. If you’re using more, just try not to crowd them too much – the top shouldn’t turn into One Big Sheet of Egg (which sounds Monstrously Unappetizing, to me). If you’re trying to make this for too big of a crowd, go ahead and take the dishes hit and move half the veggies into another oven-safe casserole, rather than crowd this dish.

11. Let the hash and eggs cook until the egg white is nice and solid – start checking at 5 minutes if you like your eggs runny, as I do, but don’t rush them. If you like your eggs completely done, you can probably safely walk away for at least 10 minutes. Now, incidentally, is an excellent time to wash your cutting board, knives, spatula, and the pan in which you cooked the meat. Wash-up: Done! Heat from the Oven: Absorbed!
    

    Yes.

12. Serve up the hash with an egg per serving, at least. I topped mine with pretty liberal lashings of sriracha, because of course I did. I had some for breakfast one morning with a spot of ketchup, and that wasn’t half bad, either.
    

    Dinner. Perfect.

If you’re worried about this meal not being substantial enough, it also makes a great topping for polenta, or grits, which adds a nice grain element, too. With polenta underneath and a veggie soup or hearty salad alongside, this meal could easily morph into a simple supper for a Pretty Large Gathering, with Relatively Little Fuss. Of course, it would also make a Savory Breakfast.

Or, if you’re more the solo-type, you could do as I did: make enough for several meals, and eat it a different way each time to avoid Leftover Doldrums.

Leftover Dinner: Kraut and Brats, with Polenta Spaetzle

Since I’m starting from zero here, I decided to begin with something I know. Food! Not, admittedly, food that appears in many of the English huswifery books…or at least, any I’ve run across so far. Instead, this meal is going to go traditional German – kraut and brats – with one twist: polenta spaetzle.

This dinner was, as a “leftover dinner,” a bit of a whats-already-around. It began with some bratwursts that had been accidentally left in the fridge when a friend came for dinner. At about five days stay in the refrigerator, they needed using. Fortunately, there was also a half jar of sauerkraut left in there that needed to be used within the month.

From there, the rest of that half of dinner was simple enough.

Kraut and Brats:

1. Two cheap beers leftover from my Halloween party  started out in a pot set on the stove over medium heat (a medium saucepan, with a lid for use later). If you’re replicating this, I imagine practically any domestic will do – I used two cans of Old Milwaukee. Wooo – big spender. I bought it for beer pong, hush.
2. Half of the jar of sauerkraut immediately joined the beer. The jar was originally 28.5 oz – so a smaller jar might also work, if for some reason you don’t keep half jars of kraut around your place.
3. Next, I stripped two brats of their casings (strictly a manner of preference – I think it makes them easier to cut and I don’t care if they crumble a bit). I cut them into 1/2 inch rounds and then they joined the kraut and beers. My brats were already cooked, but since they had been forgotten in the fridge, I still left them in there for the full cook time – which will be plenty of time for uncooked brats to get safely done.
4. Next, I rinsed four Yukon Gold Potatoes and diced them into 1/2 inch cubes – more or less. I practically never peel Yukon Golds, but again – it’s all a matter of preference. Then, into the pot with them!
5. Then, I rinsed four carrots – each about 3/4 in. in diameter and six inches or so long. I gave them a scrub, but didn’t peel them – then, cut each into 1/4 inch rounds. I added the carrots to the pot with a liberal sprinkle of salt and a grinding of pepper.
6. Finally, I sliced half of one small yellow onion into 1/8 in half moons and added that to the top of the pot. And now I put that lid on.
7. Now, everything simmered in the pot for over an hour – so you can see why it would be perfectly safe for sausages to start out raw at the beginning. To test for doneness, poke a fork through the potatoes and carrots – and cut into a sausage round if you started raw!

Next, things got a bit more creative. I wanted a side dish – and I wanted spaetzle. But I also wanted to use up the polenta leftover from a dinner two days previous. So I decided to try my hand at combining the two.

Polenta Spaetzle:

1. I started from refrigerated (still cold) polenta – very firm, and with fair amount of Swiss cheese added to the original batch. If you’re making polenta just for this use, make it firm – and maybe be a bit conservative with the cheese. Make it far enough in advance that you can first refrigerate the batch. I was working with about 3/4 of a cup of leftover polenta – and I tore through it all by myself, so portion accordingly.
2. I started a tablespoon and  half of butter heating over medium in a skillet. If you’re working with more polenta for more people, adjust accordingly – I’d say about a tablespoon of butter for every half cup of polenta you’re using will work out about right.
3. While the butter was heating, I pulled bits of polenta off – just like I would with spaetzle dough – in one inchish bits, some smaller, some bigger.
4. Once the foam subsided from the butter, I added all of the polenta to the skillet and turned the heat to medium low. Make sure you don’t overcrowd the skillet – it’s fine for the skillet to be full, but the polenta bits need to be all in one layer.
5. I let the polenta spaetzle cook for about ten minutes, turning bits individually occasionally.

Spaetzle simmering away in the butter. The herb bits you’re seeing are dried thyme from the original batch of polenta – I can’t say they’d be necessary for this particular use. But then, thyme never hurts, either. There’s never enough thyme. (Shakespeare loved a pun, you know.)

To serve everything, I just poured the spaetzle out of the skillet onto one half of a plate (yes, with the butter and all – never abandon butter) and heaped up the other side with the kraut and brats. And added beer (a Shiner) in an appropriate, iced stein, obviously.

Lovely vinegary kraut and brats, wonderful buttery spaetzle, and lovely, cool beer in an iced stein.

The kraut and brats made enough for lots of leftovers – I’d say it could serve three to four easily, especially with a side dish added. The spaetzle did not make enough for leftovers – because I ate it all immediately.