February 13, 2014 February 13, 2014/ Morgan
I have a very vivid memory of eating breakfast with friends after a long long night. Someone made hash browns. Now I LOVE potatoes – but homemade hash browns from scratch (like raw potatoes grated) has got to be one of the worst things I’ve ever had. The texture was horrible. It was greyish brown… oh gosh it was so bad. I really hope that friend doesn’t read this and remember. Haha! I’m sure that others have had some kind of success with using that method. I haven’t. It isn’t fool proof. Mornings require fool proof for me.
And then BING! The answer! Have you ever accidentally thawed out frozen hash browns? It’s just cooked shreds of potatoes. COOKED. So just take those potatoes that you’ve been cooking in your slow cooker (and you have plenty in the fridge, right? If not, get on that!) and get ready to make some easy oil-free oven hash browns!
Next week I’ll be moving to a new house (again!) and so I’m going to break in my new kitchen with a video on how to make homemade hash browns without oil in your skillet!
The KEY to good fluffy fully awesome not from frozen hashbrowns is prebaked potatoes. There is no substitution. Next week I’ll be making a video on how to do it on your stovetop! Sometimes it’s just nice to have some space available on the stove for tofu scrambles, gravy making, etc!
- Baked Potatoes that have cooled, preferably refrigerated several hours. You can use red, russet or gold potatoes. Probably even purple potatoes (I never see those!) I cook my potatoes in the crockpot! (1-2 baked potatoes per person)
- salt to taste
Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Line a sheet pan with either parchment paper or a silpat baking mat.
Take a sturdy box grater (like this one) with large holes and shred your cooled baked potatoes. The skins are just fine to leave on. Some will shred up and some will end up just falling off in big pieces that you can discard.
Now toss in a pinch or two of salt. You can also add other seasonings here like chili powder, black pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, etc.
Take a handful of the grated potatoes and place it on your lined baking sheet. Form it into a little flat disk that is a little bit larger than your spatula (you want to be able to easily flip these!) Gently press it down so that it sticks together. Continue doing that until you have used up all of your potato.
Place in the oven and bake for 20 minutes. Now gently flip your hash browns over and then bake again for another 10-15 minutes, or until nicely browned. Serve with gravy, plant strong biscuits, fruit, unsweetened yogurt or whatever you love to eat with your hash browns!