Recipes / Breakfast / American Breakfast Crispy Hash Browns Grated, rinsed, and then wrung out far harder than feels polite. Every drop of water you leave in is a drop of crispness you will not get.
Time 35 min
Serves 4
Difficulty Easy Ingredients Servings
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Quantities for 4 servings
800 g floury potatoes (Maris Piper or Russet), peeled 1 tsp fine sea salt 1/2 tsp black pepper 2 tbsp cornflour 50 g unsalted butter 2 tbsp neutral oil
The base is worth following fairly closely, but everything on top is yours. Change the fillings, herbs and garnishes freely, and use the method as your anchor rather than the exact list.
Method 1 Grate the potatoes on the coarse side of a box grater straight into a bowl of cold water. The water stops them browning while you work. 2 Swirl them about, drain, and refill with fresh cold water. Repeat until the water stays almost clear, usually three changes. You are washing off surface starch, which otherwise makes them gluey. 3 Tip the grated potato into a clean tea towel, gather it into a bundle and wring it out over the sink with real force. Keep twisting until no more liquid comes. This is the step that decides whether they crisp, and almost nobody does it hard enough. 4 Toss the dry shreds with the salt, pepper and cornflour. The cornflour is a small insurance policy against any moisture you missed. 5 Heat the butter and oil in a heavy frying pan over a medium heat until the butter stops foaming. 6 Add the potato in four mounds and press each into a flat cake about 1 cm thick. Then leave them completely alone for 5–6 minutes. Fiddling breaks the crust before it has formed. 7 Flip once when the underside is deep golden and lifts cleanly, and cook for another 5 minutes. 8 Drain on a rack and season again immediately. Serve straight away — hash browns start softening within minutes and there is no reviving them. Tap a step to cross it off. Your place is saved on this device.
Cook’s notes Floury potatoes only. Waxy ones hold their moisture and steam into something closer to a potato pancake.
Salting before wringing draws out water you then discard along with the seasoning. Salt after.
For one big pan-sized hash brown, use the whole quantity and give it 8 minutes a side over a slightly lower heat.
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