I’m talking about potatoes that have been chopped into smallish chunks and cooked in a skillet with some oil, and end up with the outsides browned and crispy. Home fries I think some call them.
I’ve tried with russet and white and red potatoes. I’ve tried starting with completely raw potatoes and potatoes that were partially cooked (by boiling) first.
What I get is a pan full of cooked white lumps of potatoes, not a bit crispier than if I’d boiled them. Meanwhile the pan itself is covered with stuck-on brownish bits that came off the potatoes. :mad:
What am I doing wrong? Would I have better luck if I used a griddle instead of the skillet? Or maybe I need more oil? I generally don’t like really greasy foods so I’ve been putting in only two or so tablespoons into a 9" skillet, so it’s more a coating than a pool.
Make sure they are thinly sliced. No more than a 1/4 inch and smallish pieces. So they’ll cook all the way through. about a 1/4 inch oil in the pan and it needs to be hot. Sizzles when you add a piece of tater.
My grandmother made pan fried taters. We did years ago, but haven’t recently. We diced some onion in the pan too. Some people use bell pepper, but I don’t care for it.
Do not stir until they are brown enough to release themselves from pan. If they are sticking, resist the temptation to pry them off the pan. You do need to use a bit more oil than you probably want to.
It’s messy. Thats one reason we rarely cook them anymore. A splatter screen over the pan helps. But the whole stove top will require a good cleaning afterward. Then theres the greasy pan and screen to wash. A lot of work for some pan fried taters.
The whole plan is basically to take cooked potato pieces and cook them fast with relatively high heat, so that the outside dehydrates and browns without drying the whole thing out.
I’d also completely cook the potatoes in the microwave first- boiling might introduce moisture, which you won’t need.
What I took from that advice was to rinse the chunks in cold water and then thoroughly dry them before cooking. Use more oil and heat than you think you need to, and most importantly, once it’s in the pan, leave it alone. Just let it cook. When pieces move freely when you give the pan a shake, then you can turn it over; repeat until it’s a brown and crispy as you want it. It takes a lot longer than you think it should.
I live alone so I’m cooking for one most of the time but my method is, thin sliced then put dry with a paper towel. Spread out on a plate and microwave for 3 minutes. Melt enough butter to just cover the bottom of a non stick pan on medium high heat and spread slices in one layer. Don’t turn them over until you get the golden brown color you want and repeat on other side. Let em rest for a couple minutes on a paper towel to get some of the butter off before plating.
For thicker cuts of potatoes, I use a cover that has ventilating holes. It allows reflected heat to help cook the spuds, but allows moisture to escape. It looks exactly like this one, but with holes all around. I bought it in Paris and have never seen one like it in the US. I wouldn’t give it up for love or money. After the first side is well browned, I remove the lid and flip the spuds to cook the other surfaces, leaving the lid off to allow any residual moisture to cook off.
I’ve read both linked threads, and you know what? It sounds like I wasn’t doing one thing wrong. More like 5 or 6.
So tonight I will rinse diced potatoes to get rid of the surface starch (change #1) then nuke them until soft (Change #2) and leave on towels for a while to let moisture evaporate (Change #3) – it sounds like excess moisture was one of my biggest problems.
Then I will increase the oil to 1/4 C (change #4) and use the larger skillet (Change #5) so they have more room for moisture to escape while frying.
Then I will preheat the oil til it shimmers (change #6) - I generally get impatient and toss them in before the oil is very hot. I will make myself wait this time.
Then I will leave the damn things ALONE for at least 3 minutes (change #7.) I tend to get impatient and poke and stir at things constantly – see above on my impatience. I suspect that’s the single mistake. The crispy outside I want isn’t getting the time to ‘release’ from my pan and so ends up having to be chiseled off the pan later on.
Okay, that’s overstating it a little, but, well, if you were grading home fries on an A to F scale, my previous attempts deserved a D, mainly because they weren’t actually burned and thus could be eaten.
These were a B+. Maybe even a A- ! (Next time I’ll make the dice just a little bit larger.) Hubby was suitably impressed by the improvement.
I did make one change to my plan: I fried up some chopped onion in a little bacon fat first, then took the onion out, added the oil and reheated it for the potatoes. The cooked onion got stirred in for just the last minute before I took the pan off the heat. No, I didn’t worry about getting all the bacon fat out of the skillet – doesn’t bacon fat improve just about everything?
I neglected to mention it in my earlier post. Glad to hear you had a great batch of fried taters. Now I want to cook some ASAP.
We usually fry up some round steak to go with them. Tenderize well, coat in flour with S&P (ziplock bag is the easy way), lay in skillet with hot oil. Don’t disturb it for at least three minutes and then flip over. Remove and make gravy from the brown bits and oil still in the pan.
That was the meal I *always *wanted when I visited Grandmother’s house.
