One of my favorite things about St. Patrick’s Day is the corn beef hash we make the next day (or days) with leftover corned beef; we’ve even taken to cooking an extra brisket just for hash making. It pays to plan ahead.
While turkey leftovers in our world usually inspire making a pot of Bib’s Roasted Turkey Bone Gumbo and at least one recipe of this Not ‘Yo Mamma’s Creamy Green Turkey Enchiladas, Ed pestered us for the several weeks preceding Thanksgiving this year to help him come up with a turkey hash recipe “that he’d like…”.
We fiddled around a bit with our pre-holiday turkey (we did Planksgiving at our house again this year – fried shrimp po’boys, spicy slaw and Cajun sweet potato fries) and nagged chef Libby in Austin for some input as well.
The final result was this Ed’s Kitchen Sink Turkey Hash, built on the foundation of sweet, spicy sausage with a big pile of fairly traditional hash vegetables (onions, peppers and potatoes) thrown in.
The poblano adds a nice bit of heat and flavor and the sweet potatoes tie in with the whole Thanksgiving theme as does the hint of sage.
One of the critical steps for this recipe is the repeated compress, crisp and turn of the hash to get crispy, browned, caramelized edges in every bite. Don’t skip it, be patient, and keep turning and crisping until it suits you. The browner and crisper the better…
Soft poached eggs and hollandaise or gravy aren’t absolutely necessary, but damn, they push it over the top. You gotta try this one…
1/2 lb bulk spicy sausage
1 large sweet onion, chopped medium
1 medium red onion, chopped medium
1 red bell pepper, stemmed, seeded, chopped medium
1 poblano chile pepper, stemmed, seeded, chopped medium
1 bigass sweet potato, precooked (firm), cut into 3/4-inch dice
1 -2 large cloves garlic, minced
4-5 tbsp unsalted butter
1 lb turkey, chopped to 1/2 inch or so pieces
1-2 tbsp fresh sage, chopped, optional
1 tsp smoked paprika
1 tsp good salt
1 tsp fresh ground black pepper
1/2 cup flat leaf parsley, chopped (more if desired)4-6 eggs, poached, with soft yolk
Hollandaise sauce if Ed’s coming over OR leftover gravy
Prep. Scrub and dry the vegetables; dice and chop to your heart’s content.
Start with the sausage. Sauté the sausage until browned; remove from the skillet and remove all but (roughly) 1 tbsp of the remaining fat.
Sauté it up. Melt 4 tbsp. of the butter over medium-high heat in the same skillet; add both onions, both peppers, the precooked sweet potato, and the garlic. Cook, stirring now and again, until the onions and pepper begin to soften.
Now add another tbsp. of butter, the turkey, the sausage, sage if using, paprika, salt and pepper; stir to mix well.
Crisp it up. Now smooth the mixture in the skillet out and gently compress it; raise the heat a notch and don’t touch it for 3 minutes or so to let a crispy-crunchy layer of caramelization develop. When the three minutes are up, turn that brown, crunchy bottom over and mix into the upper hash layers. Compress the mixture again and repeat at least two more times – the desired endpoint here is lots of crunchy, brown goodness. Add the parsley on the last turn and stir.
Serve it right now, topped with a runny-yolk poached egg and drizzled with hollandaise if Ed’s coming over. He won’t eat it any other way, though if there’s any real turkey gravy left over, it might even be better.
Enjoy.
