Ingredients (For Four)

• 1 Tin of corned beef (cut into 2cm cubes)
• 2 Medium Potatoes (cut into 2cm cubes)
• 1/2 Onion (chopped)
• 3tbsp Oil
• Seasoning

Method

1. Par-boil your potatoes in lightly salted water until the cubes can have a cocktail stick or cake tester put into it with little resistance but not to the extent of them being fully cooked. Because of the size of the cubes and the water already being boiling it will probably take about five minutes so no walking off to do that quick other thing.
2. Whilst the potatoes are boiling heat the oil up in a frying pan and once it has fully heated up add in the cubes of corned beef and the onion as well and just let it cook away. You don’t want to move it around too much or it wont get that crispy cooked layer on the outside and runs the risk of falling apart.
3. On draining your par-boiled potatoes use some kitchen towel to dab them down a little bit to take away some of the additional water on the outside and then add it into the frying pan as well.
4. Give the frying pan a good amount of pepper and taste it all together to figure out how much salt you want to add (depending on the corned beef you got and how much you salted your potato water the amount of salt you need will vary slightly).
5. Turn the heat down to a medium-high. You don’t want it cooking too much that it burns the outside but instead just slowly adds colour to it. Move everything around in the pan every three or so minutes, turning some of the potato and/or corned beef around to give it a little more crisp on other sides.
6. When it is at your level of crispy then serve it up!

Eating And Storage Tips

This is one of the most basic flavour profile dishes that I cook. It is something that I turn to when I am either not feeling too great or do not want to go to a huge amount of cooking effort but you can certainly make it more complex; When I want to enhance this a little I put it into a Yorkshire pudding and would do more with the side of vegetables (when I cooked this I just par-boiled some cabbage and then pan fried it with plenty of seasoning).

If you aren’t keen on drier foods then this goes great with a splodge of gravy (I did what all food photo takers do and took the photo before I splodged gravy on). The dish is by no means dry but you do cook the corned beef so that it becomes a little crispy and the potatoes don’t maintain moisture from par-boiling them after frying away so it is not quite as moist as it could be. Some versions are wetter, if you don’t let it cook for so long, or add things like the vegetables (especially carrots and peas) directly into the mixture to crowd the pan more.

Cooking for less than four people? I just cook for myself and usually do enough for a second portion so I have leftovers for the next day. So I only used half a tin of corned beef and put the other half into a sealed container in the fridge for using at another time. For the leftover portion itself I put this into the fridge as well and then gave it another quick heat up in a frying pan for breakfast the next day and did a runny fried egg to go with it too; The fried egg gave it a little bit of moisture to help cancel out it being reheated and cooked for more but also it made it extra breakfast-like. This is one of the bonuses of just doing it with basic salt and pepper seasoning!