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Fried Raw Potatoes
Wash, peel, and slice in cold water, drain in a colander, and drop in a skillet prepared with two table-spoons melted butter or beefdrippings, or one-half of each; keep closely covered for ten minutes, only removing to stir with a knife from the bottom to prevent burning; cook another ten minutes, stirring frequently until done and lightly browned. Sweet potatoes are nice prepared in the same manner. -Mrs. M. E. Southard.
A straightforward skillet potato from Buckeye Cookery, steamed under a lid before it is browned. The method still works; only a few details need translating.
- The hinge: dry the slicesThe potatoes are soaked and drained but the recipe never says to dry them. Water clinging to the slices will steam rather than fry and keeps them from browning in the last ten minutes. Pat them dry in a towel after draining.
- Why cold water at allSlicing into cold water rinses off surface starch and stops the cut faces browning while the rest are peeled. Five to ten minutes is enough; a long soak leaches out too much.
- Beef drippingsThe rendered fat saved from roast beef, commonly kept and reused in nineteenth-century kitchens. Any beef tallow, bacon fat or clarified butter gives much the same result. Plain butter alone will darken over twenty minutes of cooking, which may be why the book offers the half-and-half option.
- Two tablespoons is leanFor a full skillet of potatoes this is a shallow fry, not a deep one. Expect some sticking unless the pan is cast iron or heavy-bottomed and well heated before the potatoes go in.
- Heat levelNo temperature is given. Medium is right: high enough to sizzle when the lid comes off, low enough that ten covered minutes does not scorch the bottom layer.
- Stirring with a knifeThe recipe calls for a knife to lift and turn from the bottom without mashing the slices. A thin metal spatula does the job better and scrapes up the browned film on the pan.
- TimingTwenty minutes total suits slices about a quarter-inch thick. Thicker rounds will need longer covered; thinner ones brown faster and can be uncovered sooner.
- Sweet potatoesThey cook faster and their sugars catch more readily, so shorten the uncovered browning and watch the pan.
- YieldRoughly two pounds of potatoes fills a ten-inch skillet in a workable layer and serves four.
Frying potatoes from raw rather than from boiled leftovers was worth writing down in 1877. Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping came out of Ohio Methodist church circles and was built from contributed recipes, many of them signed with the contributor's name, which is why Mrs. M. E. Southard's initials sit at the foot of this one. The covered-then-uncovered technique she describes is the same two-stage principle behind a modern hash brown: steam the interior soft under a lid, then drive off the moisture and brown the outside in open fat. She adds a note that sweet potatoes take the same treatment.