There are many ways to make hashbrowns. I wrote about one way in April of 2021. That article was about making cubed hashbrowns. I mentioned there that you wanted to boil the potatoes before frying them. The key to good hashbrowns is pre-cooking the potatoes; sometimes that means par-cooking them in a deep fryer like you would French fries, roasting them in the oven, or boiling them, which means that any whole pre-cooked potato is perfect for breakfast. You can slice, dice, shred, or mash them. This time? I’m focusing on shredded hashbrowns.
I got the idea for this recipe from a scouting camp. We used dehydrated hashbrowns for the camp and fried them in a pan until they were golden brown and delicious, or GBD for short. When you cook the potatoes, you remove some of the starch in them, leaving only the natural sugar. This sugar reacts with heat, the Maillard reaction, and you get golden brown. Or possibly burnt if your heat is too high and you don’t have patience.
If you haven’t bought one yet, get yourself an electric griddle. Set your griddle to 350F when cooking almost everything. There will be some foods you’ll need at higher or lower temperatures. But I exclusively use 350F for everything; eggs, bacon, French toast, garlic bread, hamburgers, hashbrowns, and grilled cheese. I can go on, but I won’t. An excellent electric griddle will give you so much versatility in cooking.
Back to hashbrowns, I used some leftover potatoes from the night before. I shredded them up while they were cold and started to fry them on my griddle. I add some butter, salt, and pepper to season them, but you can add so much more. To shred them, I used my trusty box grater; just watch your fingers. I have a lot of machines in my kitchen, including a stand mixer with a shredding attachment and a food processor with a shredding attachment, but I use my box grater because I want to be careful with these potatoes. The machines do a decent job at hard foods and cheeses, but soft foods like cooked potatoes turn out terribly. So do yourself a favour, and use a box grater, it will take longer, but the result will be worth the time.
Shredded Hashbrowns
Ingredients:
2-3 cooked potatoes (cold, whole, peeled, grated)
1 tbsp canola oil
1-2 tsp salt
1-2 tsp pepper
Directions:
- The night before you want to make hashbrowns bake your potatoes in the oven for one hour.
- Once cooked, put them in the fridge overnight.
- The following day peel the skin off and use your box grater to shred them.
- Once shredded, let them rest while you heat your electric griddle to 350F.
- Put 1/3 of the shredded potatoes in a bowl and add 1 tsp oil per batch.
- Toss the potatoes in the oil to coat them.
- Start frying them on the griddle until they start to brown.
- Add salt and pepper just a few pinches at a time but taste the hashbrowns to ensure you’ve added enough. Remember, it’s easy to add salt but impossible to remove.
- Repeat with the rest of the batches and serve it with peameal or regular bacon, eggs, toast, and your morning beverage of choice.
