Corned Beef Hash Challenge - Introduction

Right, following accusations of dairy product bias, this is a new challenge in a new direction. Meat. Sort of. Cured meat to be exact. You might know it better as corned beef.

Corned beef does not really contain any corn. It’s known as corned beef because back in the day the meat was salted (cured) using small pieces of salt which were the same size as a kernel of corn - hence you “corned the beef”. The name just stuck.

So, why are corned beef tins such an unusual tapered shape? Opinion varies, I have found the following varied reasons:

• To stop them from rolling about in your shopping trolley.
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• The tins are that shape so when you clean them out you can use them for perfect Yorkshire pudding tins.
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• To make them more difficult to open.
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• They were originally made in the tapered shape so that they would fit more compactly in British soldiers’ knapsacks in either the Boer War or the 1st World War.
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• They're not peculiar - they're the same shape as the corned beef inside.

But I think the definitive explanation comes from John Nutting, editor of The Canmaker Magazine (yes, really!) who says:

They continue to be made in their traditional tapered rectangular shape because it is easier to extract the contents in one piece, thus allowing the block of corned beef to be sliced. That's also why the cans also employ a key that enables the user separate one end of the body of the can: there's no seam to prevent the contents slipping out. Originally, the cans were made by folding up folding tinplate sheet that produced the correct taper and soldering the seam. More recently this has been replaced with cans that are formed from welded cylinders, then reformed and expanded mechanically.

Anyway, that’s the background info for you, on with the challenge! I’m going to endeavour to try one recipe each week until the race is run….

Judging Criteria

The corned beef hash will be judged on the familiar 3 criteria:

Ease & Effort:

How simple was the method to follow? Was there a lot of hard or fiddly work involved? Scored out of 5.

Presentation:

How appealing was the finished article once plated and ready to eat? Also scored out of 5.

Taste:

I have never, ever eaten corned beef hash in my life! So therefore I can’t apply any strict guidelines for how I want mine to taste, based on prior experience. Instead I’ll be going off-road and freestyle, and simply judging if it tastes great, good, OK I suppose, not too hot, or where’s the sick bucket. Scored , you guessed it, out of 5.

Running Order:

1 - James Martin B

2 - Brian’s Belly

3 - Delia Smith

4 - Mamma Cherri

5 - Get Stuffed

6 - Aga Links

7 - Netmums

8 - Wally Webb

9 - James Martin A

10 - Student Recipes

11 - Bob Jude

12 - Crazy Squirrel

James Martin, you will go on my first whistle……