Cooking Grand Floridian Original Corned Beef Hash Recipe

[Rus Wornom]

I can't be the only old timer who frequented the Grand Floridian during its first few years of operation...but I can't find a recipe for their best breakfast dish anywhere online. The Cafe made a Corned Beef Hash that was KILLER...but it was so different from traditional "canned" corned beef hash that the wait staff not only had to "warn" patrons that their hash was different, but the recipe changed several times over the years to become more mainstream...and then so much so that the latest menu I just looked at online doesn't even have corned beef hash listed.

In 1988 when the GF opened, the corned beef hash was a mixture of evenly-sized strips of corned beef, onions, green peppers and potatoes, all about the same width and length of shoestring potatoes. I think it was all sauteed in olive oil and topped with eggs over easy, but that's the part I don't really remember...it's been 25 years, okay? But I still remember the feeling that this was the best corned beef hash ever invented.

Does anyone else remember this magnificent dish? Even more, do you have the recipe??? Was it ever published in a Disney cookbook?

 

[Tropical Wilds]

I remember the hash, or the version of it that was around in the early 90s, and I have a friend was a long-time chef at GF, so maybe I have the answer you were looking for.

The long and the short of it is that GF used to do their own corned beef brisket in-house for lunch sandwiches and it was part of a specialty rolling carving station during frequent special events, banquets, and during some dinners. The chunks that didn't cut cleanly were reserved or the parts that weren't used in the carving station after the use life has passed (which is short to begin with) was shredded, not diced, into a hash the next day as the high-quality corned beef brisket they used is an expensive cut of meat and time consuming to make (even if it was purchased from their supplier pre-brined). Because of it being made fresh, cooled, then refrigerated, then re-cooked (fried), it changed the texture slightly and it made it saltier and slightly tougher (very good for a hash), more aged and seasoned (a plus for corned beef), and thus more flavorful. The salt factor was a real turn off for people as a lot of people found it too salty, especially if they salted the potatoes as part of the hash, or they used bacon fat to fry the hash (very common when the dish was first served), and it was kind of notorious for that. They tried to balance it out with a higher portion of potatoes than one would usually find in a hash, but it didn't always work. The general complaint was it wasn't as moist as hash is normally thought to be, it was very salty, and if the eggs were overcooked, the effect of the dish was really lost. All and all, it was a dish with a lot of moving parts and a lot of opportunities for it to get messed up.

Anyway, it wasn't so much retired because they wanted to make it "more mainstream," but because rolling carving stations slowly became passe and they didn't have enough product left over to make enough hash to sustain the breakfast crowd the next day. Then they started buying in the corned beef, serving the eggs as your choice or on the side, and frying it in shortening, butter, or vegetable or canola oil as the public became more conscious about "healthy oils."

If you want to try to re-create the dish as you remember it, my suggestion is to use twice-cooked corned beef brisket, fry it in bacon fat, use a slightly higher ratio of potatoes, and salt the snot out of it.

 

[Rus Wornom]

Awesome! Thanks for the insight...I knew there had to be a solid reason the recipe kept changing.

 

[Tropical Wilds]

No problem. I'm a treasure trove of random and somewhat useless (outside of here) information.

 

[greeneeyes]

did you look in our long running Disney recipe thread in this forum? It has hundreds of recipes and there is also an index to help you look