Dealing with a potato(e)

Potatos are a cheap food. They are relatively nutritious as well. Some people love them, some people (like myself) feel rather ambivalently towards them. There are about as many boring ways to cook a potato as there are boring people in the world. But there are also a good number of really tasty ways to make them (thankfully). This post is going to be an evolving one where I will add new ways to use this wonderfully carbo-rich and inexpensive vegetable in tasty ways.

Like all of my recipes here, I'll give you the basic rundown on a few basic ways to use some ingredient, and then give you a few interesting variations as (hopefully) inspiration for you to explore some wonderful culinary inventions with your own personal stamp.

Mashed potatoes. Pretty simple, but as leftovers, they can be used in a couple of very interesting ways. One is the potato pancake. Simply form the cold mashed potato into a small pancake and set it in a hot frying pan with a bit of oil. Cook on each side for long enough to brown it and so that it has a crispy outside. Good with a couple of eggs at breakfast or mix it with something savory as a side dish for dinner.

The other interesting use is potato bread. The potato is mixed with flour (about 50/50) and baked as a bread (with yeast, that is).

Baked potatoes. The only recommendation I have about baked spuds is that you should always make extra ones so that you can easily use them as leftovers for dishes like gnocci, potato bread, or the hash brown recipe below.

Hash browns. Here is a really simple way to prepare a potato and there's a lot of room to improvise and add. Here's my favorite variation, and a few sub variations that use up the left-overs. First, start out with a scrubbed raw potato or two. set them close at hand for the grating (if you grate them ahead of time, they tend to turn purple. If this doesn't bother you then don't worry about it, but if it does, either don't grate them until you're ready with a hot pan, or rinse them in cold water a bit before you cook them). I generally like to start with a bit of chopped onion and jalepeno in the mixing bowl. Start to get your pan warmed up while grating the potato. Squeeze out as much water as you can from the grated spud and add that to the onion and chili peppers. Then add salt and pepper and mix it well. Put some sort of cooking oil in the pan and put your potato in. Flatten it out like a pancake and cook it until it gets brown enough to flip. Cook it on the other side until it's brown and crispy. This is something I like to have with a steak.

Left-over uses! If you have some leftover mashed or baked potatoes (peel them and mash them up), you can squish them in with your hash browns and they will help to hold the whole thing together. It comes out very tasty. In fact, I often bake extra potatoes when I have the oven on so I can do this a few days later.