Tiroler Gröstl

Tiroler Gröstl is boiled potato and leftover roast beef fried hard in a pan with onion until it catches at the edges, topped with a fried egg. It is Tyrol's farmhouse hash, built to use up whatever roast was left over from the day before, and never made from raw meat cooked specially for the pan.

What it really is

Boiled potato, already cooked and cooled, is cut into rough pieces and fried in a well-used pan with diced onion and chopped leftover beef, pressed down and left alone long enough that a proper crust forms on the bottom before it is turned. Caraway seed goes in for a sharp, slightly bitter background note that cuts through the fat. A fried egg goes on top just before serving, its yolk left soft enough to run into the hash once it is broken.

Leftover meat is the whole premise, not a substitution. A Gröstl made from freshly cooked beef misses the point: the dish exists because a mountain kitchen would not waste yesterday's roast, and the slightly firmer texture of already-cooked meat is part of what the dish is meant to taste like.

How it is served

• Straight from the pan, in the pan itself in many Tyrolean guesthouses.
• With the fried egg on top, broken open at the table.
• With a simple green salad on the side, rarely anything more elaborate.

How to write it on the menu

• Flag the egg on top plainly.
• Say what meat is used, since pork or bacon sometimes replaces the classic beef.
• Mention it is a way of using leftover roast, a genuine point of Tyrolean farmhouse character rather than a cost-cutting shortcut.