Canned Potatoes Were Made for the Deep Fryer
There are certain assumptions about Southern cuisine that don’t apply to me, mostly those based on the concept that most Southern food is homemade. My family lived quite poorly for a very long time – I lived two or three generations earlier in a house with dirt floors, depending on which branch of the family tree you follow – and this influenced the way my grandparents cooked and ate. .
Doing everything from scratch is good and rewarding when you have the money and time, but it’s a real pain in the ass if you lack both. Growing up in poverty and living in a growing food-deficit area, my grandparents embraced convenience foods—canned, packaged, and frozen—as soon as they hit Piggly Wiggly’s shelves, and they’ve never looked back.
And while I almost always prefer fresh (or frozen) vegetables to canned ones, I have a soft spot for canned potatoes, which always came with Grandma’s roast (which was drenched in cream of mushroom soup and heavily seasoned with garlic). salt).
Those fluffy potato sensations hit me yesterday when I read Daniel M. Lavery’s charming article on the subject. In it, Lavery praises canned potatoes for their undeniable convenience factor, especially in the meal planning department. Instead of boiling potatoes on Sundays and planning to roast or mash them for a week, there’s nothing you can do because canned potatoes are always ready to eat:
But canned potatoes are boiled potatoes, in many ways more convenient and flexible than frozen potatoes (which have already been processed into french fries, hash browns, or some other predetermined shape). They are best when you toast them yourself (whether fried, mashed, breaded, pan fried, deep fried, etc.) but perfectly puréed (depending on your definition of healthy, I I’m not saying serve it for Thanksgiving). but it can be turned into a very healthy solo dinner). The worst part of frying potatoes is the fussy boiling, without which they will inevitably become tough and tough, so you can jump right into the fun part of frying.
I’m most interested in the fun part of browning. I wouldn’t use canned potatoes for mashing – at least not without a lot of THC on board – but when coated in delicious fat like bacon fat and seasoned with salt and MSG, pre-sliced canned potatoes can be very quickly turned into tasty, salty and crunchy snack, especially if you have an air fryer.
Combining the convenience of a canned potato with the piercing airflow of a small, powerful convection oven, you can cook crispy, toasted potatoes in 15 minutes if you use sliced potatoes, or 25 minutes if you use a can of canned potatoes. all. Both are good, but I prefer pre-sliced because you get more toasted surface per potato and that’s the whole point. Don’t worry, your friends and family won’t be able to tell that the potatoes you feed them were from an 80 cent can unless you tell them yourself.
Crispy Fried Potatoes
Ingredients:
- 1 can of chopped potatoes
- 1 tablespoon bacon fat
- Salt and monosodium glutamate or any seasoning mix to taste.
Drain potatoes, rinse and pat dry with paper towels. Melt bacon fat if needed and mix with potatoes in a bowl. Cook them in a deep fryer heated to 400℉ for 15 minutes until browned and crispy. Transfer to paper towels and season with your choice of seasoning. Serve with sour cream for dipping if you so desire.