Hashbrowns

Ingredients

• Potatoes (the Russet variety works best)
• Olive oil
• Salt

Directions

Prepare the potatoes by first shredding them using a cheese grater, into a salad spinner. Spin as much water as you can out of them. Once you've done that, squeeze them again with your hands to get more water out. Once you've done that, put them between some paper towels and squeeze them again to get even more water out.

Seriously. Get as much water out of your potato as you can. If you do, they will cook up as golden, crispy hash browns. If you do not, they will form glop. Half of that glop will stick to the bottom of your pan and burn; the other half will frustratingly refuse to cook because the glop at the bottom of the pan is stealing all of the heat.

Heat up about 3mm of olive oil in a deep frying pan. Sprinkle enough dried potato shreds into your pan to make a layer about 5mm thick; don't worry about pre-forming potato patties. Don't add too much potato to the pan: if it gets too thick, the bottom will start sticking to the pan, and once it does the potatoes on top don't cook evenly anymore. Give the potato a stir for about a minute, and you will find that it naturally tries to clump itself together. After that minute, you can fold your potato clumps together and flatten them to form patties in the pan. Give the patties a couple more minutes to cook on each side. Pull them out, sprinkle them with salt, and eat 'em.