Hashing It Out

Well, today is the big day. HAPPY ONE YEAR BLOGGY-VERSARY, HEATHER!!! Be sure to check out the earlier posts from this week to see all of Heather's celebratory discounts and whatnot.

In foodie news, I got my brinner recipe done! The only thing is I didn't end up having it for brinner, but I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me explain. So it snowed yesterday...again! This is the the fourth or fifth time this year, which is simply unheard of for Nashville. I don't think Nashville school kids are going to get any summer vacation. To make a long story short, it took and hour and a half to drive the nine miles it takes me to get home. Snow makes all of Nashville miserable and a half. After that stressful little jaunt through the snow and with Mike out of town at the time, I really hated the thought of trying to get back out there the next morning after everything had a chance to freeze. Thankfully, my boss is awesome and let me stay home, so I made myself a lovely little breakfast, the main feature of which was *drum roll* homemade hash browns!



I saw Sunny Anderson on Cooking For Real make hash browns simply by shredding them in her food processor. Who knew it was that easy?! That was what first inspired me to make my own. I used this Man Hash Brown recipe from Alton Brown as a guide, but kind of did my own thing with it.

Here are my spuds. I had a pound of the multicolored potatoes left over from the root vegetable recipe last week. Purple potatoes are still fun and exciting for me. :-)

This is my food processor with the shredder attachment all ready to go. The more I use this little beauty, the more I love it.

And here's why. These are the potatoes after my little processor was done with them, all shredded and wonderful.

Now, to make hash browns, the potatoes need to have the extra moisture removed, so I just wrapped them up in a tea towel, twisted it up like a tourniquet, and squeezed out the water.

Now time for the frying. I used a tablespoon of bacon grease that I had reserved in the fridge to grease up the pan.

Once all the bacon grease was melted, in went all the potatoes. I let them cook for five minutes and then used a plate to help me flip them over. Five more minutes on the other side finished them off.

I added chunks of my favorite Gouda cheese on top and saved some Gouda for my little hard boiled egg too. Toast was the final touch for my Home-From-Work-I-Hate-You-Snow breakfast, which turned out fantastically.

It's important to note that this recipe is just a base. The hash browns by themselves are a little plain, so you'll want to add something to punch up the flavor. Green peppers, onions, whatever you like will work. Like I said, I just added cheese, which was fine. I had no idea hash browns were this easy. This opens up a whole new world of possibilities, like latkes. I love latkes! Stay tuned, people, I'm going to be a potato shredding machine. :-) Hope you enjoy.