1974 Thrifty food lesson
We’re making speedy Corned Beef Hash. The price of fresh meat is rising, so we’re using canned, which is cheaper. Just four ingredients – a tin of corned beef, an onion, a large potato, and some oil. They’ve brought in their own corned beef tin, but impatient boys have sped ahead and bent off the important tiny key attached to the tin, essential for opening, so now they’re stuck. Ugh. Cynthia chisels a hole, wraps each tin in a towel and heaves to open it using a stong tin opener. Not an easy job but she’s done it before.
Full speed ahead, boiling the chopped potato, frying the onion in oil, mashing the corned beef into a crispy pile, and they’re ready to eat. A fast, cheap, nutritious recipe that we’ve cooked in the 1974 energy crisis. Tick, tick, and tick.
How many of them will go home and ask their grandparents to check my bit of food history? I think they’d rather watch TV before the blackout arrives.
History
Corned beef was made hundreds of years ago by preserving it in salt. When canning was invented, corned beef became an essential food, as it could be transported around the world. During World War I and World War II, corned beef was part of military rations and served as a valuable source of protein during food rationing.
Ingredients in Corned beef 2025
Cooked Beef (95%), Beef (3%), Salt, Preservative: Sodium Nitrite
Story in my book Cream Horns and Vol au Vents
itaughtthemtocook.com 