Regional differences in food can sometimes be subtle and confusing. I know I have ordered hash browns in restaurants and expected to get a crispy pile of tasty grated potato, when what I get is a side of cubed potatoes, mixed with browned onions and peppers. And vice versa. I guess I have used the term interchangeably – and that is wrong. Who knew? Even when I went exploring Martha’s brain trust I found hash brown recipes cheek and jowl with home fries recipes. Perhaps Connecticut, where I grew up, has a little problem differentiating between such deliciousness?
Dan Pashman, who has recently written a delightful book about food and eating, “Eat More Better”, https://www.sporkful.com/ posits that this is a crucial point – because how will you cure your New Year’s hangover without a good side dish of potatoes? I like both hash browns and home fries, because really, how could you not? But if I am struggling with a New Year’s Eve cheap-white-wine-induced hangover, please (silently) hand me a plateful of crispy butter-fried hash browns. Home fries just won’t cut it.
This is probably why McDonald’s is so popular in college towns. Their hash browns come as little oval patties, which don’t even require a fork, and have been deepfried and are hot enough to scald you into mindful awareness of your misadventures. I would suggest as a resolution that you cut back on the alcohol and boost your potato consumption this bright and shiny new year.
I prefer my hash browns pure and naked, with some salt and pepper, or if you are lucky enough, a dash of Lowry’s Seasoning Salt, which brings bliss and joy to everything it touches. (When we make potato pancakes with leftover mashed potatoes, a casual toss of Lowry’s adds a crisp, salty crust and life is again wonderful.) We fry our hash browns in butter, or sometimes with a little bacon fat if we are daring, though I have heard that some folks use duck fat! What a concept! If I can ever make myself part with the cash for an expensive jar of duck fat you can believe that hash browns will be the first dish I try out. The mind boggles!
We spent a few years early in our marriage preparing Betty Crocker boxed dehydrated (and subsequently rehydrated) hash browns on Sunday mornings, which were fine for the entry level of our cooking. (The college cafeteria was still a threatening recurrent memory…) But honestly, how hard is it to grate a potato? Today you can cheat and buy bags of pre-shredded hash browns in the refrigerated foods section of the grocery store, near the eggs and the inert plastic-bagged bagels, you lazy git. My new school of thought is to peel and boil the potatoes, allowing them to cool so I retain my fingerprints and my future life of crime, then grate the potatoes before frying them to crunchy, crispy nirvana in a non-stick pan with lots of butter. This eliminates the need for soaking the raw, grated potatoes in water to get the starches out. And it also eliminates that vision of grey, stringy potato shreds, which is much too sad and mournful to contemplate.
But this is in my dream world, where someone has iced up my Diet Coke, ironed the New York Times Style section, cooked and served the hash browns and bacon, and with attentive mercy has doled out a post-breakfast dark chocolate Milano cookie. The real world is less perfect, but no less fascinating. We had breakfast at the luncheonette in Green’s Pharmacy in Palm Beach the other morning. The cooks were silent and completely syncopated in their morning balletic grand jetés and glissades in their tiny communal cooking space. We watched as omelets were poured and twirled and folded in mid-air, scrambled eggs tossed lightly skyward, poached eggs landed lightly in small white bowls while the hash was browned and the bread toasted. A good quarter of the gridiron-sized griddle that was covered with browning, fragrant home fries, which smelled terrific as they sizzled and were spooned onto waiting dishes. The dinner plate-sized pancakes appeared, flipped, and disappeared with a repeating beat all their own. One could not be so rude as to intrude and beg for off-the-menu hash browns. The towering stack of crispy, salty bacon I gobbled up took care of that yen. And it was an powerful performance by grand masters.
P.S. We did not see any Kennedys having breakfast at the legendary Green’s as many gossips avow, but there were enough knuckle duster sparklers, Belgian shoes (sans socks), Lilly shifts and popped Lacoste collars mixed in with our rank and file ordinariness to make the visit to Green’s a worthwhile cultural (and culinary) event. Thank you Green’s Pharmacy! Your cooks’ skills are a virtuosic tour de force!
“What I say is that, if a man really likes potatoes, he must be a pretty decent sort of fellow.”
― A.A. Milne
https://southflorida.menupages.com/restaurants/greens-pharmacy/)
https://www.sporkful.com/tag/hash-browns/
https://www.bonappetit.com/recipe/skillet-hash-browns
https://www.imafoodblog.com/index.php/2009/03/31/oven-baked-hash-browns
https://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2011/11/ultra-crispy-roast-potatoes-recipe.html
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/06/hash-browns-vs-home-fries_n_4538508.html
Ed Plaisance says
I gained weight just reading about the taters. The confusion has been frustrating sometimes in restaurants when you expected the other kind of potato.
You might be interested in this site where Pascal makes roesti, the Swiss version of hash browns.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDg8OrQdgmw
He uses goose fat AND butter. It is in French, but easy to follow. (If do like I did last year, I went to the goose/deer processing place in Worton around this time of year and collected about 5 pounds of goose fat for free, and then rendered it myself and froze it.)
Pascal also recommends partially cooking the potatoes and letting them cool before grating. Also notice the grater he uses…not your typical cheese grater, which produces strands that are too thin. I bought one through Amazon…great device.
Jean Sanders says
Thanks for this, Ed. It’s nice to know that other people go around dazed and confused about important potato decisions! I’ll watch the video, too. The last thing I need, so early into the new resolutions, is another delicious way to consume hot, highly fattening potatoes! Happy New Year!
Bill Anderson says
Forget both potato preparations and order grits instead.
Jean Sanders says
Can’t do grits myself, but I hear you, Bill! Thanks for weighing in!
Ed Plaisance says
I like to be inclusive…when at Waffle House, I order grits AND hash browns.