Hash Browns: Day 1

I have always wanted to cook my own McDonald Hash Browns, crispy on the outside and tender on the inside. So I watched Youtube for recipes and every time I make them they aren't crispy. So let's start our own experiment.

According to McDonald's, these are the ingredients of Hash Browns:

Potato(es), Vegetable(s) Oil (Canola Oil, Soybean(s) Oil Hydrogenated, Flavor(s) Natural Beef, Citric Acid Preservative) , Salt, Corn Flour, Potato(es) Dehydrated, Dextrose, Sodium Acid Pyrophosphate To Protect Color, Pepper(s) Black Extractives, Prepared with Vegetable(s) Oil(Canola Oil, Corn Oil, Soybean(s) Oil, Soybean(s) Oil Hydrogenated, with TBHQ and, Citric Acid Preservative) , Dimethylpolysiloxane An Anti-foaming Agent

The most important ingredients here are: 

- potatoes

- flour

- dextrose (sugar)

- salt

- pepper

- oil

And that's it. No eggs, no milk, no butter. So keep that in mind.

Potatoes should be cut into little blocks. If you look at the hash brown texture of McDonald's, then you see those potatoes are cut like that.

This is how you chop them:

Second, those hash browns use cooked potatoes. So you should have cooked them already before you prepare the hash brown. I would first chop the potatoes and then let them cook for about a few minutes until they begin to soften, don't overcook them.

Next, add the salt, sugar, pepper and flower to the potato blocks. Now here comes the experiment, how much salt, sugar, pepper and flower should we use? After seasoning, you should start creating the hash browns. Make them thin enough so that they will fry at the right rate later on.

Another thing that I learned is that you can get a crispy skin by using a mixture of flour and water to coat the outside, so we're going to do that too. 

Finally, if you want to coat your hash brown with the flour and water mixture, the hash brown should be hard enough, because otherwise it won't work as you have a texture that will fall apart. So that means you need to put your hash brown in the refrigerator first to make it hard. 

After you have iced the hash browns in the refrigerator, you coat them with the flour and water mixture and then you deep fry them. Hopefully it will work.

Go here to find out how I made the Hash Browns.