The Crispiest Hash Brown You Will Ever Make
Duck fat has a high smoke point and an unmatched savoury depth, which makes it the single best thing to fry a potato in. The trick to a genuinely crisp hash brown is getting the water out of the shredded potato before it hits the pan — squeeze it hard, and then squeeze it again. Stack them with a fried egg and you have a breakfast that rivals anything on a brunch menu.
Ingredients
Serves 4 | Cost: $6.25 per serving | Total: $25.00 | Ready in 30 min
- 900 g (2 lb) russet potatoes, peeled and coarsely grated
- 4 tablespoons duck fat
- 2 tablespoons potato starch
- 4 large eggs
- 2 spring onions, green tops only, thinly sliced
- 1 teaspoon sea salt
- ½ teaspoon black pepper
- Flaked sea salt, to finish
Instructions
- Dry the potato. Pile the grated potato into the centre of a clean tea towel, gather the corners, and wring it out over the sink as hard as you can. Repeat with a second dry towel. The drier the potato, the crisper the hash brown.
- Season the mixture. Tip the squeezed potato into a bowl and toss thoroughly with the potato starch, sea salt and black pepper until every strand is lightly coated.
- Fry the first side. Heat 3 tablespoons of the duck fat in a large heavy frying pan over medium heat. Add the potato in four loose mounds and press each into a flat round about 1.5 cm thick. Fry undisturbed for 7–8 minutes until deep golden underneath.
- Flip and finish. Turn each hash brown carefully with a spatula, add the remaining duck fat around the edges, and fry for a further 6–7 minutes until equally golden and cooked through. Drain briefly on a wire rack.
- Fry the eggs and stack. In the same pan, fry the eggs to your liking in the residual duck fat. Set a hash brown on each plate, top with a fried egg, and finish with the spring onion greens and flaked sea salt.
Nutritional & Dietary Notes
Dairy-Free
There is no milk, cream, butter or cheese in this recipe. Richness comes from the meat, the cooking fat and the aromatics rather than from dairy, which makes it a comfortable choice for anyone who is lactose intolerant or avoiding dairy altogether.
Gluten-Free
Every ingredient in this recipe is naturally free from wheat, barley and rye. If you are cooking for someone with coeliac disease, double-check any stock, sauce or spice blend you buy in, as gluten-containing thickeners and malt derivatives are common hidden additions in commercial products.
Featured HOTRO.ca Product
This recipe is built around Duck Fat from HOTRO.ca. We source premium BC-raised and ethically farmed meats and slow-simmered bone broth, so the quality of the core ingredient does most of the work for you. Substituting a lesser product will change the result more than any other single change you could make to this recipe.
Shredded potato hash browns fried in duck fat until shatteringly crisp and stacked with fried eggs.