Hash Browns

I had these for supper tonight.

Sometimes I just want starch. I posted my easy potato chip recipe when I was on one of these starch binges, and now I'm posting one of my other favorite things to do to an innocent potato. I just can't leave well enough alone.

The thing about hash browns is that they're addictive. They're also kind of ubiquitous: appropriate for breakfast, lunch, supper, or a midnight snack. They go well with cheese, sour cream, even yogurt. Sometime I'll crack an egg on top of them as they finish cooking, to better imitate the throw-it-all-together-and-fry aesthetic of the greasy spoon diners of my youth. Because that's what hash browns are, at their heart: they're a throwback to the days when I was very little, and my dad would take me to breakfast bars run by ancient old short-order cooks who knew all the customers' names by heart, and who knew what you were ordering before you'd sat down at your regular stool. They remind me of giant flat-top griddles with a coffee-pot that lived on one corner of them, a row of hamburger molds across the back for shaping the fried eggs, and a trough across the front for all the scraps and scrapings, so someone could take them home to their pigs at the end of the morning shift.

Hash browns are meant to be greasy, crispy, and satisfying, and these are. Almost. I generally try not to murder my arteries, so I cut out most of the grease by using non-stick pans. They aren't made on a flat-top griddle, because all I've got it my home stove, but they are crispy and satisfying. I'm no ancient short-order cook, so I haven't quite mastered the authentic je ne sais quoi that comes with wielding a spatula for fifty years in front of one of those griddles. But they're still damn good, and they're fast comfort food for me.

Hash Browns

1 russett potato
1/2 tsp olive oil
Cheddar cheese
Salt
Pepper
Optional: Eggs for frying

Use the food processor to grate the potato. Take the potato-bits, and press them between two layers of paper towels to dry them out a bit. If your towels are soaked and the potato still seems really wet, you may want to repeat this process a few times.

Once you've dried your potato appropriately, set a large saute pan over a burner on medium high. Add the potato gratings in piles (I usually do four or five medium-sized piles per potato). Depending on the size of your pan, you may not be able to do the whole thing at once: the goal is to keep the piles pretty well separate from each other, so that they don't steam each other as they cook. Use a spatula to smoosh the piles flat, into hash brown shaped pancakes. Salt these to taste. Let them cook for about two minutes, then add the olive oil and swirl the pan to get it under all the hash browns. Let the hash browns continue to cook, smushing them to the pan occasionally to help them sear, until the pan-side of the hash browns is a deep golden color. By this time you should be able to flip them without them falling apart, so flip them each, and cook the other side in the same manner until it too is deep crispy brown.

Remove the hash browns to a plate, and grate cheddar cheese on top of them to finish them off.

Alternate way to finish off hash browns: once you've completely crisped both sides of your hash brown, crack an egg over the top of it and fry the egg on and into the hash brown. You get an egg that's really satisfyingly crunchy, and if you add cheese on top of the egg, it's kind of the perfect breakfast all in one little pile.

Servings: 1-2, depending mostly on the size of your potato