ChapterZero

Hashes are one of my favorite types of meal to make; they’re incredibly versatile. I made one today to use up the remnants of a rather bland chicken I roasted earlier in the week. Here’s the recipe:

Ingredients:

• 1/3 a roasted or baked chicken, shredded
• turkey pastrami, finely cubed (about 1/2 as much as the chicken)
• a stalk of celery, finely chopped
• a medium red bell pepper, finely chopped
• 4 serrano peppers, seeded and finely chopped
• half a tsp of garlic, chopped
• slightly more cubed cooked yukon gold potatoes than meat, by volume
• 3/2 tsp. of S-bend hot sauce (or some other mustardy, vinegary type hot sauce)
• a good barbecue sauce (one that’s not too strong or eccentricly flavored; probably a mustard based sauce is best, but I used what I had on hand: Stubb’s original barbecue sauce)
• salt, italian seasoning, and paprika
• olive oil

Instructions:
Add just a little bit of olive oil to a pot (you don’t want the hash to be oily, since you’re adding barbecue sauce, so use just enough to keep the meat and vegetable mix from scorching before it starts to release its juices) and sautee the garlic. Dump in the vegetables and meat mix, season with salt, paprika, and italian seasoning, and heat while mixing until about a minute after the vegetables start releasing their water. Incidentally, mixing helps shred the chicken further. Mix in the barbecue sauce and hot sauce and let heat through. Mix in the potato, being sure to coat each chunk, and heat for a couple minutes.

I ate some immediately after cooking, and was disappointed — not only could I taste the red pepper and celery as individual components, the hot sauce also overpowered the rest of the flavoring, and the potatoes didn’t pick up the seasoning. I just had some again, and it was much better this time around. Apparently you have to let this hash sit and cool so the flavors blend. You might also want to add some onion: I didn’t because I was too lazy to do any more chopping.

Update: Pictures!

chicken and potato hash before adding bbq sauce

chicken and potato hash with bbq sauce

Possibly relevant posts:

• My favorite tuna recipe (2/7/2007)
• Spicy Pesto Lasagna (6/3/2009)
• Goat cheese, arugula, and chorizo (9/14/2008)