3-Minute Hash Browns
Ingredients
Instructions
  1. Take a big pan, sizzle some salted butter in it, and just when the foaming subsides, coarsely grate an unpeeled potato over it on the large holes of a box grater. The potato, unmolested will still have all its starchy essence and the flavor that conveys. Do it sparingly, so that you see as much pan as potato; don’t pile it up anywhere.
  2. Once the potato hits the pan, salt it. The reason you want there to be so much space is to give the steam somewhere to go. Potatoes need to shrink and shrivel, concentrating their taste down and replacing their water with precious fat. Give them room and let them bind with each other as the starch comes out. Amazingly, the shreds will form a latticework snowflake of starch, butter and salt.
  3. Once this happens, slide it out of the pan in one motion onto a plate. Then flip, salt lightly again and cook for another 15 to 20 seconds. Then eat! (Alternately, you can flip in a couple pieces with a tin, sturdy spatula.)
  4. Repeat as necessary