Hash

Hash can be the name of just about any chopped-up food, but its most popular meaning refers to the sort of hash one associates with breakfast. There’s roast beef hash, even chicken hash; but corned beef hash is the big gun. Freshly chopped and sizzled to a crisp, crowned with poached eggs eager to trickle yolk at first poke, it isn’t only a side dish. It can be the whole meal: breakfast, lunch, supper, or midnight snack. In western South Carolina, hash is something else: a great, visceral stew made from whole hogs when they are barbecued. It always is served on rice, which tempers its very porky character.