Over
at the resort, Hallie asked her Aunt Chris how to make hash browns. She knows
better than to ask me -- her mother. At the age of nine I was chubbier than my
mother liked and she asked a doctor to put me on a diet. At that time, fried
foods were immediately dropped from the family diet, never to return. Among my food
virtues, I eschew fried food. Among my food vices – well, you know.
Anyway,
this isn’t exactly about hash browns, but it is about potatoes. My mother would
slice potato into a frying pan, cook with a little onion, and when served, I
remember the potatoes as delicious, but Mother never fixed them after the big
diet began. Once I tried to fix potatoes this way after I was married with
failing results. I never tried again.
Then
I ran across a book some years back, Little Heathens: Hard Times and High
Spirits on an Iowa Farm during the Great Depression, by Mildred Armstrong
Kalish (Bantam Dell, 2007). I bless Mrs. Kalish for this book, which explains
so many of my parents’ practices – just the way they managed life. In a chapter
titled “Farm Food,” she included the following method for frying potatoes:
“In
a large heavy-bottomed skillet – I recommend a cast-iron one – place two or
three tablespoons of vegetable oil, heat to very hot, and add fresh, thinly
sliced potatoes. Of course, on the farm we used tasty bacon fat. If you want to
live dangerously, go ahead. Now sprinkle coarse salt and freshly ground black
pepper on them. Stand by with a long-handled pancake turner. Don’t touch them until
they are nicely browned on the bottom – about ten minutes. At this point,
gently scoop the slices up and deposit them upside down into the skillet. When
they are crisp and brown, serve immediately. These are a special treat.”
And
there it was! -- Mother’s method of frying potatoes. And I agree with Mrs.
Kalish – they were a special treat. I think the secret is to give them plenty
of time to cook before turning. I suspect the bacon grease, which my parents
also used in the ‘50s, is another secret.
We
ate potatoes a lot as I grew up, most frequently boiled and mashed on one’s
plate with butter, salt and pepper. I never boil a potato. Occasionally, Mother
baked potatoes, which is my preferred method, and my dad boiled and mashed
potatoes only for special occasions. Those were wonderful, too – real potatoes
boiled and mashed smooth with real butter and perhaps a little cream. KW