OK, homefries are supposed to be gluten-free. They’re just supposed to be potatoes fried in a pan, golden brown and crispy on the outside, moist on the inside, and seasoned with salt and probably pepper and maybe a little cayenne. You would think that would be a simple thing to do, but between badly-made traditional homefries which seem to be little more than lukewarm unseasoned leftover potatoes and those that are deep-fried and breaded or batter-coated, let’s just say the bar doesn’t seem to be particularly high nowadays.

It’s a shame, because making excellent homefries is so easy to do. I’ll let you in on my “secret” method, which is so much easier than any I have seen before, and it’s much more reliable, too. But first, a little homefry talk.

Years ago I read a discussion in an old cookbook that said that the difference between homefries and hash browns was that the homefries were made from raw potatoes, while hash browns were made from precooked ones. Linguistically this makes a lot of sense, as the word “hash” is generally used for things that are precooked and then panfried, like corned beef hash. Meanings have drifted, so now “hash browns” are generally raw shredded potatoes pressed into a patty or a pancake and fried until set, while “homefries” are recooked precooked potatoes. (We are going to ignore the abomination which is breaded or batter-fried potatoes masquerading as “homefries” from this point. If you like them, you can buy them from Sysco, just like the restaurants do.)

I have read over and over again that you have to boil potatoes before making them into homefries, not only to “save time” but because they won’t come out right otherwise. I can tell you with certainty that neither of these are true. It’s much faster to make them without an extra boiling step, and homefries are made more reliably with raw potatoes than with precooked ones. Another issue – one I would make a great effort to avoid – is that there are certain varieties of potatoes that set up and get hard when refrigerated. They do not soften up again when reheated, and no matter what you do with them subsequently, they taste like leftovers. Potatoes like these make terrible homefries when precooked, but make excellent homefries using my method.

The method:

Scrub potatoes and peel them if the skins are thick. Dice any size you like, from 1/4″ to 1″ cubes. Put in a pan with a little extra fat – olive oil, butter, bacon fat, chicken fat, and beef fat all work. Heat on medium high, stirring every five minutes or so until they are about 50% brown. Season with salt, black pepper, and red pepper flakes or cayenne for heat, paprika for color. Cover and lower the heat to medium-low. Continue to stir every five minutes until potatoes are cooked through. Cooking should take maybe 20 minutes for large cubes, less for small ones. Any excess oil can be removed from the pan by blotting with a paper towel at the end.

That’s all there is to it. I used to make these almost every day when I was cooking breakfast for my family. It’s just a matter of stirring occasionally, so the cooking process takes very little time, and is easy to coordinate with eggs or meat or toast to make the breakfast I call a “blue plate special”.

A favorite variation is to fry up bacon and cut into pieces. Set these aside while frying up the potatoes. In a separate pan saute onions until they start to get translucent, then cover until cooked through. Add to the potatoes, top with the bacon, and serve as is or with cheese melted on top – a huge favorite from my cheese-eating days. We used to love that on a cold morning.