Karen Wright: A family recipe, a nearly empty fridge and a perfect pan of hash
Growing up in Featherstone when I visited my grandparents, they very often had a pot of corned beef hash keeping warm in their big cast iron fireplace, which also had an oven and a big chain with a hook on it that held the ever-full kettle that hovered over the open fire.
Strangely I don't recall my mum making corned beef hash, perhaps that was because she is Welsh and maybe the hash is not something the Welsh eat as often.
Anyway, my dad knew how to make it and he taught me. Of course, it is one of those dishes that varies from family to family and can become quite controversial.
Whichever way you make it, the two key ingredients are potatoes and corned beef.
Last week on returning home from holiday I found myself looking into an empty fridge and the idea of nipping to the shop didn't appeal, so I went to my store cupboard.
My store cupboard contains ingredients that are in tins, packets, or jars. I spotted a couple of tins of potatoes and a can of corned beef. Inside five minutes I had steamy hot bowls of corned beef hash on the table.
This is what I did, and not a fresh ingredient in sight!
I boiled some water in a pan and added a good tablespoon of onion granules from my spice drawer.
Then I sliced up the tinned potatoes and added them to the pan, next I cut up the corned beef into large chunks and added that to the pan. I added a good squeeze of brown sauce, a beef stock pot, and a handful of frozen peas.
Once everything was bubbling, I thickened the hash with some beef gravy granules and just like that, it was ready!
The whole meal cost less than £3 and could easily serve up to six people depending on appetite sizes and whether you added anything on the side.
I found a frozen garlic bread in the freezer, so I used that, but my all-time favourite is to serve hash with Yorkshire pudding!
Of course, if you have fresh potatoes in the house, you will use those, but I quite like tinned potatoes.
They are good to have in the cupboard for an emergency, and I always keep them in the caravan as a trusted stand by!