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Creamed Hashed Potatoes
Delicious creamed hashed potatoes are prepared as follows: Boil small potatoes with their skins on. After boiling let them get very cold, then peel them and chop very fine in a chopping bowl. For 1 pint of chopped potatoes melt I heaping tablespoonful of butter in a saucepan, then drop the potatoes in; pour in enough cream to cover the potatoes, season with a little salt and let them simmer over a slow fire until the cream is absorbed; then serve in a hot dish.
A simple dish with two conditions that decide whether it works: the potatoes must be cold before chopping, and the cream must reduce rather than boil.
- Chill the potatoes properlyBoiling them in their skins and letting them go very cold is the hinge of the recipe. Warm boiled potato tears into paste under the knife; fully chilled potato holds discrete crumbs that absorb cream without turning to glue. Overnight in the refrigerator is ideal.
- QuantitiesA pint of chopped potato is about 2 cups, which would come from roughly 1 to 1 1/4 lb of small potatoes. "Enough cream to cover" depends on the width of the pan; in a small saucepan expect somewhere around 3/4 to 1 cup.
- Which potatoesSmall waxy or all-purpose potatoes hold their shape through boiling, chilling and chopping. Very starchy baking potatoes collapse and give a mash rather than a hash.
- A chopping bowlThe wooden bowl and curved chopper have largely vanished. Chop by hand on a board, or pulse briefly in a food processor and stop well before it looks smooth. Do not grate, which produces long strands.
- "A slow fire"Low heat, a bare simmer. Cream at a rolling boil will break and catch on the pan bottom before it has time to be absorbed; expect 10 to 15 minutes of gentle cooking.
- CreamHeavy cream reduces well. Half-and-half or milk has enough water to thin the dish and enough less fat to curdle if pushed; if using milk, keep the heat lower still.
- Seasoning and yieldSalt only is specified, in period style. Black pepper, a scrape of nutmeg or chopped chives all suit it. Serves 3 to 4 as a side.
This is a thrift dish: it uses small potatoes, and it works from potatoes already boiled and gone cold hem and chill them, though in a household cooking daily that could as easily mean yesterday's leftovers. Cookbooks aimed at low-cost housekeeping are full of such recipes, where the actual economy is in the planning rather than the ingredients, and where a spoonful of butter and a little cream are what lift plain boiled roots into something worth naming "delicious." It makes an instructive contrast with the modern hash-brown skillet, since the aim here is the opposite of crisp: the cream is meant to vanish into the potato entirely, leaving a soft, bound dish served hot in a heated dish so it does not stiffen at the table.