OK, I said I'd get something here everyday, and I'm trying. Here's a recipe. Oh look, you say, He's just trying to fill the void of good stuff with a silly recipe for something anybody can get in a can or bag at Trader José (I am in California, after all).
No, a thousand times NO!! I have been contemplating releasing this method for hash browns for the last three weeks. Now, I have to say up front that it is not my recipe. It comes from an edition of "Sunset" this past year sometime, and they got it from someone who wrote in to reveal it as their favorite thing. Well no wonder! Who doesn't like hash browns? Who doesn't love grating potatoes and onions and frying them in huge quantities of oil? Who doesn't like cleaning up the stove and cutting the splatter with a tablespoon of Mr. Clean? Who? I say.
Well no more. We have been freed from the misery of hash brown remorse. Here's how it goes.
OK, at the grocery store, be sure that you get a small onion, some garlic and a five ounce bag of "salt and pepper, krinkle cut potato chips". Work with me here and don't laugh too soon.
Cut the onion up into a bunch of pieces (I never counted) I think they say "chopped". And get the garlic in the same condition, only finer. Put a little oil in a cold frypan and the onion and garlic. Start the heat. Bring the temperature up and cook the mixture 'til they are translucent. In the meantime, cut the top off of the potato chips (so the bag won't make a hard pillow), and crush the chips with your hand or if you are a "gourmet cook" use your stainless meat pounder. Leave a few pieces about an inch square so people can know where the potatoes came from. After the onions and garlic are done, pour all of the crushed potato chips into the frypan and stir them around for about five minutes or so, let them get good and hot. Have a cup of water and a tight fitting lid for the pan somewhere within reach. When the potato chip, onion and garlic mixture is hot, pour the water into the pan and slam the lid on tight. Set a timer for about six minutes. Turn the heat down to medium. Wait, don't peek.
You can peek briefly, if you want to, to put four eggs in little depressions you have made in the mixture before you put the water in. Do this at about three minutes. If you like really hard eggs, put them in just before you pour in the water. They'll be hard as Easter eggs. Three minutes is better.
After the six minutes is up, take off the lid and crisp up the "magic hash browns" to your liking. We put graded cheddar cheese on them while they are crisping up. It's good.
OK, so they're not like those "browns" you get at one of those places you see on "Diners, Drive-ins and Dives" on the food network. But who wants to come in a five AM, boil new potatoes 'til half done, squish them out on the hot plate (do you have a 4x5' stainless steel slab in your kitchen? Can we see it?). Well, you get the idea. Try it, you'll like it. They ARE NOT SALTY, but they don't need anymore salt. The chips are seasoned just about right.
Crab from the Monterey Bay would be better.
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