Oh, I thought you were takking about something totally different (and less legal)

Oh Gord-you probably expected brownies!

hash browns are just fried potaoes -and come in many different forms!

I agree, they are fried potatoes, and they come in different forms. If I order them at a restaurant, I prefer the home-made, leftover potato version with onions and stuff. Yum.

whaaaaaaaaaaaaaattttttttttt????

I only got as far as the hash part when trying to do some research for you

Just had to have some fun with that .....and a snack does sound good!

Hugs

Rita

Ummmmmm, some are shredded and some are diced.( raw potatoes)

Hi redbaron338,

Ummm the breakfast of past champions?

Delicious!!!  **ahem**  Any or all of the above.

Lots.

Grace and peace to you.

John

I love the shredded ones at home...yellow potatoes with the skins on and fried in olive oil with a bit of butter until brown and crusty on the outside.  I like the cubed ones at the coffeeshop.  I wish I had either right now!

Gord, there was an episode from Little Mosque on the Prairie in which the Rev. MacGee and the Imam are talking and the Rev. Magee tells of a church organist who brought hash brownies to the choir picnic.  When the Imam surmised that ended his career, Rev. Magee said, "No, now he's working for the United Church."  (I wish I could download that clip.  It's hilarious.)

Unfortunately, I had to give up on hash browns.  Too high carbs and fried foods.  Ah, well, pass the salad and sardines.

Mmmmm.......haaash browns.....

Inquiring minds want to know... What's the difference between hash browns and home fries?

Hi redbaron338,

Yesterday's leftover home fries can become this morning's hash browns.

Although mechanically and commercially produced hash browns tend to eliminate the preused format.

Home fries are typically a first use of the potato food whereas hash browns are a second use.

Grace and peace to you.

John

RevJohn,

I always thought it was the opposite. Is what you are saying the truth? That yesterday's home fries are today's hash browns? That home fries represent the first use of the potato food? Have  others know this all along?  If so my entire world view has shifted. I must look at breakfast through a different lens. I may require help and support to make the transistion.

Hi Audrey,

I have never seen yesterday's hash browns become today's home fries.

Grace and peace to you.

John

Home fries are damaged, oil-impregnated potatoes with every healthful and flavourful dimension of a fresh potato ruthlessly annihilated.

Hash browns, on the other hand, are damaged, oil-impregnated potatoes with every healthful and flavourful dimension of a fresh potato ruthlessly annihilated.

To add to the assault on one's taste, discernment and life expectancy, but suppress the gag reflex, many people  then over-salt both of these products and drown them under globs of the industrial effluent that gets bottled as "ketchup".

For those who have difficulty understanding the trickier aspects of what their kitchen is for and lack the energy to cut a potato to bits, both can be bought as value-added (over-priced) frozen lumps made in very smelly factories, then heated at home until the oil starts spattering over the oven. When the stink reaches the bedroom and there's a blue reek coming from the oven, they're done (in more than one sense of the word).

For even more value-addition and less of the slaving over an oven tray and washing-up sink, there are many "fast food" outlets that will do all the hard, messy work for you and put the stuff into cardboard containers you can eat from with unwashed hands while you drive , then, when you've done, you can just fling the biodegradable carton out the window. (Just don't endanger widlife by leaving a hash brown in the box.) Or you can sit in, if you can handle the screaming of kids being fed this stuff: a form of anti-food for people who are repelled by the crunch, mingled flavours, scent and refreshing goodness of, say, a fresh apple.

(The physiological dynamics involved in the digestion of things like hash browns and "home" fries goes a long way towards explaining why so many of the people who make and eat these substances show alarming tendencies to grow enormous butts and die prematurely.)

P.S.

Potatoes should be washed (not peeled) and boiled very gently with a sprig of mint, baked and eaten with a splash of sour cream or yoghurt or roasted crisp and golden on the outside and fluffy and tasty on the inside. Deep frying anything is disgusting but it destroys all that a potato is good for.

Whether true or not, this is what I find in the SNAPS family word-of-mouth recipe collection:

Hashed brown potatoes are diced or chopped (hashed) potatoes mixed with little scraps of chopped meat (often leftovers) that are cooked in a hot cast-iron skillet on top of the stove, usually in a little bacon fat.  They are NOT deep fried. 

 They are mashed into a pancake shape in the pan.  When brown, the "pancake" is turned over and the other side is browned.  It's perfectly okay if the pancake breaks up.

The chopped meat  is said to be "hashed" and that's where the name comes from.

The SNAPS family likes them best when little pieces of onion and little pieces of bell pepper are mixed in and cooked with the potatos and meat.

Hashed browns are normally a breakfast dish except in the aftermath of a holiday feast.  Then the bits of meat left over from the turkey, roast, or ham are used in  a meal of leftovers in the form of delicious hash or hashed browns.

**note to self**  If Mike stops in for breakfast...NO hashbrowns!

I agree, he makes them sound positively vile!

I vote for roasted!

We like cutting potatoes lengthwise in very thin slices, tossing them in vegetable oil, spices, and herbs, and then barbqing them. Mmm delicious.

I'm Irish.

Hash Browns are what ever I make them

Good answer.

Sorry, Mike, 

When the potatoes are unpeeled and cooked in a hash-brown sort of way, they may taste good to some people and appear more healthful to many, but they are not hash browns.

[I choose to assume that you cannot possibly dislike hash browns.]

When the potatoes have been boiled somewhere along the way, they aren't hash browns.

When what's called  hash browns  are second-day versions of  home fries or  any potatoes  produced through some commercial squeezing and torturing process they are not hash browns. Thus,among other things,  those little triangles pictured in one of the above postings are NOT hash browns.

The one thing about hash browns that is definitely fresh is the potatoes,   (The bacon fat may not be healthful, but it is miniscule, and the potatoes  should not end up dripping in grease.)

How salty a hash brown is depends on the person wielding the salt shaker.  Hash browns cooked in a tad of bacon fat and  seasoned  with onions need no salt at all. Salt would be a redundancy. 

Now, how about a nice side order of cheesy grits?

Or, if it's a fight you want, ask us how we make potato salad!

Those are the commercial variation. The home-made ones are browned in butter or oil, nothing more. Skin on or off is optional.

Not necessarily. One can add any meat. A family favourite is to use Fray Bentos brand corned beef (no other brand tastes the same) in the browned potatos. Onion is optional. Cooked peas can be added for colour.

Once you add corned beef, DKS, they are no longer technically hash browns.  The whole glob of god-knows-what transforms into corned beef hash.  There is a definite difference.

I totally agree redbaron.

How big should the diced potatoes be? I have seen them big or little.

How funny!

CH, they shouldn't be diced.  They should be sliced.

I'm actually pretty picky with my definitions.  Hashbrowns are shredded, often with onions mixed in, and I don't like them.  Diced or cubed chunks of potato, on the other hand, are homefries and they are delicious.  I've also seen the shredded bits squeezed together to form kind of a patty and that's often called a hashbrown, as opposed to hashbrowns with the s on the end.  Quite frankly, I don't know what they are thinking when they do that. 

Whatever they are, YOU DON'T SMOKE THEM, MAN.

They used to do that in New Brunswick.

Hash browns are fried left-over potatoes...I love them shredded, no added ingredients (ick) and fried in a wee bit of bacon fat. Home fries were a type of potato that we used to get in German gast-hauses when I lived in Europe and they were delicious but I don't know how they were cooked.

I don't consider the commercial ones to be hash browns at all, despite the fact that the fast-food corps have appropriated the name.

Since I'm not supposed to eat potatoes, I try not to think about hash browns too much.