When you hear one say to the other, “Was it good for you?”
Geez, I thought everyone knew that!
Ah, now we’ve gotten to the point of the question: “Fried taters.” For me, that means the dish often called “home fries,” small chunks fried in a pan maybe with a little onion or peppers or maybe just plain. it also sounds like you and hubby are a bit cooking-challenged.
If that’s what you’re looking for, here’s my long-winded how-to “home fries for dummies” (like me) …
Start with raw potatoes. Peeling is optional (I don’t). Cut into roughly 1/2" cubes (like slightly oversize sugar cubes). The exact size isn’t critical, but it is desirable to keep the size pretty uniform so they all cook at the same rate. Any much bigger or much smaller chunks will end up either raw or burnt.
Take a teflon skillet or cast iron skillet & get it medium hot. Not Full Blast. On a typical home stove it might take 5 or 8 minutes to get hot enough. Then add oil to get about 1/16th inch depth across the pan. The pan surface should be covered in oil, but just barely. You don’t want a pool of oil. Use a little more oil for cast iron pan, a little less for teflon.
Add the potatoes, not more than one layer deep in the pan. One of the keys to pro cooking is they don’t put way too much food in way too small a pan, as home cooks are wont to do. One layer deep and enough extra room so they can move.
Cook by sound. They should make a happy sizzling noise. If it sounds loud or violent, that’s too hot. If it’s spattering oil all over the stove, that’s too hot. If they’re just sullenly sitting there, maybe with tiny bubbles at their edges, that’s too cold.
Every 3 minutes or so move them around with a spatula. The goal is to rotate them so a different face is down on the pan. Repeat the turning process 3 times, for a total of 12 minutes.
You don’t need perfection, turning each one individually, but you do want them all turned a time or two. Don’t keep playing with them with the spatula. That’s another common home-cook foible that busts up the food for no benefit. Just turn them and leave them alone for awhile.
If the pan gets dry, where it’s no longer shiny, or if the potatoes are starting to stick to the surface, add a smidgen of oil, maybe a teaspoon or so, and spread it around by moving the potatoes with the spatula. The potatoes are supposed to be sitting on top of a thin film of oil, not soaking in a bath of it. Again a cast iron skillet will need more oil than a teflon pan.
At about 9 minutes (3 cycles), try one. If the outside is getting too brown and the inside is still crunchy (i.e. husband-style), get a lid that’s big enough to cover the fry pan. Then add 1/4 cup HOT water to the pan, & immediately cover with the lid and turn up the heat. That’ll steam 'em, accelerating the cooking without accelerating the browning.
Adding water to a pan with oil in it is often assumed to be totally crazy, totally dangerous. IF the pan has a layer of liquid oil in it, DO NOT add water. You could get burned pretty seriously. But if the pan is simply shiny with oil, then it’s completely safe to add water. Pour it from the edge so your arm isnt over the body of the pan where the steam will form and you’ll be fine.
At about 12 minutes, test one again; they ought to be just about perfect. If you set the heat a bit too cool, they might still be a smidgen underdone at 12 minutes.
But any minute now they’re gonna be perfect … And when they are … take them out and muck 'em down.
Viola: perfect home fries.
And yes, it takes a lot longer to read about making them than it does to actually make them. It’s really easy as can be.
If you do want to add some onion or diced green/red peppers, take note that diced onions only need maybe 6 minutes and peppers more like 4. So add them at halfway or 3/4ths of the way through the cooking. If you put them in too soon, they’ll be getting burned before the potatoes are done. For best results cut them about 1/2 the size of the potato chunks.
Let me know how they come out. I’ve gotta split now to get my dinner started. I’m heading upstairs to saute the mushrooms and onions for a port-wine relish for my steaks.
We are not cooking challenged. Hubby has odd and incorrect notions of when things are done. Otherwise his cooking is fine and steadily getting better. He believes, or rather believed, that roasts should be grey brown all the way through and chicken can be a bit pink and still be done. I cook well, but have never been one for frying anything, outside of sauteeing mushrooms and the like. Also, I turned over the kitchen to him when I got out of school and do not want it back!
I emphatically do not want home fries. I want potatoes peeled and sliced, and then fried in oil. I do not want them cubed! I want them cylindered.
When are potatoes done? When they role over on their back and light up a cigarette? 
One more time, lee – pink juices are definitely a sign your chicken’s not done, but pink at the bone does not necessarily mean your poultry is undercooked. If the juices run clear, you’re fine, and a sometimes well-done chicken or turkey will still be pink at the bone, for reasons explained here:
http://www.fsis.usda.gov/OA/pubs/pinkturk.htm
http://www.cce.cornell.edu/suffolk/FCSprograms/Helpline/SpringClean.htm
However, you are right – generally you do want to avoid pink meat in poultry.
It was talk like this that made him think he had a leg to stand on. You write this and he reads it. Then he says that the chicken is done, and then I bite into it and find a bleeder. He will insist that the juices were running clear a moment ago and bones can be red and it is still done. Meanwhile my piece is running pink and had that texture that says NOT DONE. No sirree bob. Talk like that leads to Trouble.
I will conceed that It may me theoretically possible to have some red at the bones and all the meat is cooked, but I personally have never seen it. What I have seen is many pieces of chicken with not done bits and blood or pink juices. This makes me lose my appeitite for poultry for weeks.
No, no…that chicken definitely sounds not done. If the texture is rubbery, then it’s undercooked.
The only reason I mention pink chicken meat is that occassionally I’ll get a chicken thigh or leg at KFC/Church’s/Brown’s/wherever, and there will be a little pink at the bone. The chicken definitely tastes done, the juices run clear, but the flesh looks a bit pink, which freaks some people out.
Try this on him:
The only way to be truly sure that you’re food is fully cooked is to break out the thermometer. (FWIW, I’ve had much greater success with digital thermometers than “bi-metal coil” ones.)
Here’s more ammo for the discussion if you need it.
I love 'taters. I particularly love 'taters fried raw in the way lee describes. I confess, though, I don’t make them often either – too much trouble, they makes a spattery mess on the stove, and, well-- they aren’t terribly healthy, are they.
As for lee’s husband’s idiosyncratic cooking – I wonder, was his mom a lousy cook? Sounds like he makes roast, fried 'taters, and chicken just like Mom used to make, if Mom couldn’t cook worth a damn. “Whaddaya mean, the roast is sopposed to be pink (…the potatoes soft, …the chicken done)? You’re crazy! This is the way it’s supposed to be! This is how Mom always made it!”
His dad once said of his mother’s homemade pie, “This is almost as good as hard tack.” Yes, she was a lousy cook. He is much better, but his standards are set to bad at times. I have caught him having a perfectly good dinner ready and letting it sit to cool before serving. I want to be served piping hot meat, not tepid.
For cylindered potatoes- slice them thinly, lay out in a medium-temp frying pan with either bacon or duck fat, and cook for about fifteen minutes a side. That’s how my family makes fried potatoes. I really really really recommend the very slow-fried home fries, though. It makes them melty in the middle, and crisp on the outside.
In panfrying potatoes, if the heat’s too high, the surface with burn before the inside is cooked. That’s why slow is best.
I think Uke already knows I’m a Thornite. Glad to know there are others.
Hey, I love raw potatoes. Real tasty! Moderation, of course, is always important. I think over-indulgence in this case would lead to a bit of tummy - upset.
My fries have to be downright mushy inside. But my potato salad has to be firm enough to hold its shape, yet not hard in the middle in any way. Heated through sounds grossening.