Canned corned beef

[torakris]

My MIL gave me 2 large cans of corned beef, I have to admit I have never eaten this before and actually don't even care for the real stuff.

Are there any good uses for this?

I am too cheap to just through it out.

[BigDuck]

Makes a great grilled sandwich with cheese.

[Jinmyo]

Kristin, perhaps fry it with onions, garlic, peppers, potatoes? Serve with eggs. Surround it with enough good things and perhaps you can dupe your kids into eating it.

Or wait until your MIL comes over and feed it to her.

[JSD]

If you can't bring yourself to throwing it out, I recommend using it as a door stop.

[SobaAddict70]

A popular Filipino dish involves sauteeing thinly sliced onions in peanut or vegetable oil, until the onions are browned, adding browned garlic, then frying the corned beef in the onion/garlic mixture until heated through. Adjust seasoning to taste, and serve with fried rice, or as Jin suggests -- with eggs or atop a plain omelette.

At least, this is the way I've had it in the past. (As a side note, on the Asian food similarities thread, this arose, along with other food items such as spam, out of the brief period where the Philippines was in American hands during WWII.)

SA

ediot: I'm assuming you're talking about corned beef HASH. If not, then don't pay attention to me.

Edited February 27, 2003 by SobaAddict70 (log)

[Suzanne F]

Oh, I was thinking it's just meat (well, a little meat and a LOT of fat and salt). In which case, turning it into hash is the natural thing to do. Just don't salt the potatoes or anything else, or you'll all be guzzling water all night.

You can also chunk it up and use it as part of the filling for pasties -- pretty much the same as Jinmyo suggests, but encasing it in a crust. Mmmm, pie.

Just don't think of it as meat.

[Jon Tseng]

#

[torakris]

Oh, I was thinking it's just meat (well, a little meat and a LOT of fat and salt).  In which case, turning it into hash is the natural thing to do.  Just don't salt the potatoes or anything else, or you'll all be guzzling water all night.

Actually this is what I do for my husband's lunches. He likes corned beef (the cans) so occasionally I pick up a little can and make a hash, the little can will last for two meals. I've always salted it and because I don't taste it before putting it in his lunchbox, it could be way too salty................ oh dear, he has never said anything.

Maybe I will try something with this monster can this weekend for lunch.

I just can't bring myself to tate it, it looks too much like pet food!

[awbrig]

throw it away!

[Jinmyo]

Dump into bowl, microwave, hand to MIL. Just walk away.

ediot:

Tpying errror.

Edited February 27, 2003 by Jinmyo (log)

[KateW]

The chefs at my school always say taste what you are cooking, or how will you know how to cook it?

Yes it is salty enough without adding any salt. Have you ever had corned beef? Like that, but more salty because it is dry.

Whenever I get cravings (yes I get cravings for this), i like to cook it in a frying pan with a fried egg in the middle. Can't let it cook too long because it will get dry and hard.

[TerrelK]

I haven't tried this with canned corn beef, but I do make it with packaged corn beel. Simmer the corned beef in water to cover with more pickling spice added for 5 hours. Should be very tender. Score the fat on top and add a mixture of brown sugar, mustard and five spice powder (as well as other spices if you wish). Put it in baking pan with baby carrots and thin sliced potatoes. Then cut a can or two of frozen orange juice into pieces and put on top. Can add the juice of a jar of watermelon pickles and the pickles to the pan. Bake at 350 degrees for half an hour. Slice.

[Wilfrid]

Just to be clear what we're talking about. The canned corn beef is not the same thing as what Americans mean by corned beef. It is a preserved beef product, but it is extremely soft - spreadable in fact - with a fibrous texture, and very heavily marbled with soft white fat. You certainly can't cook it in water, let alone for five hours - it would liquidize. The hash options described above are traditional uses, and indeed the hash can be folded into an omelette (or, less traditionally, something like a taco). It's worth spiking up a little - with a tomato sauce, or with chopped peppers or pickles; something to cut the fat.

Let me also suggest the most common use for it where I come from. Slice it carefully (best done when cold) and layer it between slices of good, crusty white bread. Add sliced cucumber, lettuce or tomato to taste. Then just a little of one of the traditional English sandwich pickles (either brown pickles, such as Branston's or a mustard-colored piccallilli). It's really a very good sandwich meat. Before you scoff, I would argue the texture and flavor are akin to ox tongue. If you don't like tongue, I have nothing more to say to you.

[Wimpy]

Wilfrid-

The Yanks should know what canned corned beef is- their supermarkets are stacked with them next to cans of Spam and deviled ham. God knows I bought enough of them when I went to college there...

I agree with you as to taste, I actually am used to the canned version having grown up in a semi-Filipino family (just as I have grown up with Spam) and in certain situations, it is in fact much better suited than the real corned beef. Eating it cold, with bread as you point out, is one example.

One could argue the Filipino's affinity for canned corned beef and Spam is America's lasting postwar legacy to our island nation. It may seem sad to some, but corned beef and spam, especially those imported from the US, are considered festive foods/gifts during Christmas time to the middle to lower classes in the Philippines. By the way, both meats are paired with that other lasting US legacy- tomato ketchup (preferably Heinz).

Which gets me thinking how fortunate I am to have had the opportunity to taste both canned and cured versions...

Edited February 28, 2003 by Wimpy (log)

[Jinmyo]

Is it like tongue? I didn't know that.

I've avoided the stuff because, well, the Germans aren't bombing London, are they?

edit:

By which I mean, see Wimpy's post above which came in while I was typing.

Edited February 28, 2003 by Jinmyo (log)

[memesuze]

When I was young, one of my favorite sandwich spreads was made from a can of "corned beef" ground in a hand-crank meat grinder, and mixed with sweet pickle relish, mustard, and a bit of mayo, IIRC. If the bread was toasted, even better. My mother was probably glad I deigned to eat something besides my desired five-days-a-week tuna salad!

Not sure if I would still delight in it....maybe I ought to give it a try - or then maybe one of you guys should do it and report....

[Jinmyo]

Well, I can easily cook tongue.

Opening tinned meat on the other hand is hard. Requires isolation lab with rubber gloves and sleeves through the wall.

[Wilfrid]

Thanks for giving me a corned beef craving, guys. Just what I was looking for.

Jin, did you really not grow up on the stuff? Corned beef, canned red salmon, sardines, cheese & pickle. Along with ham, they were pretty regular sandwich fillings in my youth.

[LESider]

There is a better corned beef than what you get at the local market. While Hormel or whatever brand is making dogfood. the canned corned beef you can get from New Zealand is much better quality. I know it when I see it and it ususally has a church key to open it.

Anyways my mom used to make a dish she learned in Tahiti called Puna Petora. It was made with Corned Beef, Onions,Garlic, Soy Sauce and Green Beans. If I remember correctly you fry the onion /garlic mixture up in some oil, add the corned beef, keep frying, then add the green beans and finish with some soy suace. it was actually pretty tasty.

[torakris]

I have to admit I did not grow up on canned stuff, the only cans in our house were tomatoes and tuna, even vegetables were fresh or frozen.

Thus I have never tasted corned beef or spam.

This stuff actually borders on gourmet in Japan and actually can only be found in the International (gourmet) supermarkets and for ridiculous prices, a can of spam runs about $7!

I was at my MIL's house yesterday and she suddenly brought up the corned beef and proceeded to give my ways to useit, the first was simply a type of hash with potaoes, next was mixing it with mayo for a sandwich (I started losing it around here) and then she went on to taking some canned sardines and rolling the corned beef inside them and then storing them in the fridge for a snack, at this point I lost my lunch!

[JSD]

Well, I did have canned corned beef as a child, and it was horrible. The can opened with a key, and the contents were sliceable. We'd have it on car trips, in sandwiches with mustard. I'd starve before I'd eat it again.

[torakris]

Well, I did what any good mother would do, I fed it to my kids!

Made a corned beef hash for lunch...

And no one liked it,

Thank God for Costco frozen tortillas!

[naguere]

As a British soldier in the 60's on manoeuvers in Germany we ate a lot of corned beef, and Spam for that matter. My favourite of all the ways was dipped in batter and deep fried, we carried our own spices to sprinkle on, stood on the edge of a forest eating it out off your mess tin  waiting for the Russians.

[FeChef]

I would imagine whatever product of "canned corned beef" you had in 2003 , its not the same now in 2018. I wouldn't eat in 2003, and its safe to say, i wouldn't eat that in 2018.

[CantCookStillTry]

Grew up with canned corned beef in sammiches, and its slightly better presented sliced version from British supermarket delis. I was very much of the opinion the Australians did not know "Corned Beef" when I was first served it over here (they make it like the American version). But a lot of research later I appreciate and like both, I will eat the former (British) when I am in the UK, no longer from the cans but the pre-sliced deli versions, and I eat it cold, unadorned straight from the packet - whilst my beloved goes green at the gills. Can't say I fancy it deep fried, and I like it sliced very thin, but there is nothing like it, and it will always have a place in my tummy! 

 

Food preference is shaped in childhood I believe, and I was half raised by my grandparents who were both evacuated in WWII and later went on to fight. I imagine at times, a tin of meat product was close to heaven if not just A Ok.