🍽️ Labskaus
Labskaus is a sailors' dish from northern Germany: corned beef mashed with potatoes, onion and beetroot into a soft, bright pink hash. It is topped with a fried egg and served with pickled gherkins and rollmops or pickled herring. The mix of salty, sweet and sour flavours is unusual but much loved on the coast.
Diets
Allergens
Contains (in a typical recipe):
What it is made of
Recipe
Ingredients
- 500 g corned beef
- 800 g floury potatoes, peeled
- 2 onions, chopped
- 300 g cooked beetroot, plus 4 tbsp of its pickling liquid
- 1 tbsp oil
- 4 eggs
- 4 pickled gherkins
- 4 pickled herring fillets
Method
- Boil the potatoes until soft and drain.
- Fry the onion in oil until soft, add the chopped corned beef and warm through.
- Mash the potatoes with the beef, onion, chopped beetroot and pickling liquid; season with pepper.
- Fry the eggs.
- Serve the labskaus topped with a fried egg, with gherkins and herring on the side.
How to make it lighter
- Poach the egg instead of frying it.
- Use more beetroot and less corned beef in the mash.
- Add a large green salad and take a smaller scoop of mash.
History
Labskaus is usually traced to sailors' food of the 18th and 19th centuries, made from salted meat and potatoes that kept well at sea. Related dishes exist in Norway and in Liverpool, where 'scouse' gave locals their nickname. Today it is a speciality of Hamburg, Bremen and Kiel.
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Values are estimates per 100 g for a typical recipe; home and restaurant versions vary. Diets and allergens are worked out from the ingredients of a typical recipe — always check with whoever cooked the dish. Not medical advice. Nutrition data: Me Nutrition dish database v13. How we count →