What’s not to love about crispy potatoes topped with corned beef and a fried egg? Boxty with corned beef is a great way to use up St. Patrick’s Day leftovers!
I have never been one to celebrate less major holidays….Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter, that’s about it. St. Patrick’s Day? Definitely not. This year, I forgot to even wear green, which is an unforgivable sin when you work in an elementary school, so I drew a shamrock on my hand with a Sharpie (I’ve been burned in the past, in the form of a hard pinch from a kid that didn’t notice that I WAS WEARING GREEN).
There is one reason, though, that I get excited about St. Patrick’s Day every year: corned beef. Not that I couldn’t purchase or make it any one of the other 364 days of the year, but it goes on sale the week prior to March 17 so that seems like a pretty good reason to me. Every year I think that I’m going to corn the brisket myself (here’s Alton Brown‘s method for making corned beef) and every year I forget about it until approximately 2.6 hours before St. Patrick’s Day, so every year I end up buying one of the prepackaged ones at the grocery store (again, I suppose I could do this any other time of year but oddly St. Patrick’s Day seems to awaken this need in me). I make it in the Crock-Pot, usually with onions, potatoes, and cabbage.
I’m never very happy with the way that the potatoes and cabbage turn out. In the Crock-Pot, they pretty much disintegrate and you really can’t even taste the cabbage. This year, it occurred to me that maybe I should try something different, so instead of cooking the cabbage and potatoes in the Crock-Pot I used Elise Bauer‘s recipe for colcannon, an Irish dish of mashed potatoes and leafy greens-usually cabbage, kale, or spinach. Any other time of the year, I’d use spinach or maybe lacinato (Tuscan or dinosaur) kale, but I already had a head of cabbage in the fridge and, well, corned beef and cabbage.
Again, typically I’d make a St. Patrick’s Day leftover meal of corned beef hash-cubed and fried potatoes, onions, and leftover cabbage and corned beef-but then I had the thought of making boxty, Irish potato pancakes. I have made potato pancakes/fritters from either mashed or raw shredded potatoes in the past, but as I perused recipes for boxy, I discovered that it is traditionally made out of a combination of mashed potatoes and raw shredded potatoes. Perfect use for leftover colcannon! Topped with shredded leftover corned beef and a fried egg, this boxty was a great day after St. Patrick’s dinner….and it seems like a perfect excuse to make corned beef and colcannon more than once a year.
Mary
Yield: 10-12 pancakes
10 minPrep Time:
20 minCook Time:
30 minTotal Time:
Save Recipe
Ingredients
- 1 cup shredded potatoes-about 1 medium peeled Russet (wrapped in paper towels and squeezed to remove excess water)
- 1 cup leftover mashed potatoes (I used the colcannon linked in the body of the post)
- 2 Large eggs (lightly beaten)
- 1 to 1 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
- 1 cup buttermilk or milk (I used buttermilk)
- 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
- pinch salt
- black pepper
- canola oil
Instructions
- Place a baking sheet with a wire rack set on it in the oven. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees. Combine all ingredients except the canola oil in a large bowl (start with 1 cup of the flour and add more until you get a batter of medium consistency).
- Pour about 1/4 inch of canola oil into a 10-inch skillet. Heat over medium until shimmering then ladle about 1/4 to 1/3 cup of batter into the pan for each pancake. I just scooped it out with a wooden spoon and spread it slightly; I got 3 pancakes in each batch.
- Fry for 2-3 minutes (until golden brown) then carefully flip. Cook on the other side until brown. Remove from the skillet to the baking sheet in the oven. Repeat until you have used up all the batter. Lightly salt the tops of the boxties (you can also brush a little melted butter on them).
- Serve while hot as a side or a base for a hash-type dish topped with shredded meat and a fried egg!
