Tuesday, May 05, 2009

Something else I learned


Frozen hashbrowns do not make good mashed potatoes.

I consider myself a mashed potato connoisseur, and in light of this I decided to test out a potentially time saving idea I recently had involving frozen hashbrowns.

The main problem was the consistency. Boiling the frozen bits took no time at all, but draining them was a chore. I had to pretty much use a press method with the colander in order to get the excess water out. The result was soggy potato strips that seemed to have potential, but upon mixing they failed to fully blend.

My heavily textured goop was returned to the kettle in an attempt to steam even more of the excess water out and to get a softer texture and the resulting mash after another mixing was very similar to your typical bowl of potato goodness. The only difference however, was that the starch content was much too high for some reason and thus this potentially time saving procedure was checked off my to-do list, not to be repeated in the near future.

If only I had added cheese this whole thing probably would have worked. And bacon. I love bacon.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nice. And then a tad of cream cheese and cilantro. Perfect.

Jkplayschess said...

haha!

Mikaela said...

I'll keep that in mind. Creative idea, though. I made mashed potatos with the skins on one time, but this was another failed shortcut because, although I thought they were quite tasty, my entire family protested the occurence of peel bits in their creamy mashed potatos. ;-)

Carolyn Young said...

Sounds like you need a good cookbook. Go to Costco and get America's Test Kitchen's Family Cookbook and you'll be good to go. Anything by them or Cook's Illustrated is a winner.

Bon Appetit!

Anonymous said...

Heh - I've tried that before, too. what a mess! =D

Mom said...

Hey Daniel,

Did you know that you can buy frozen mashed potatoes? They're in the frozen section with the frozen hashbrowns. They have them at the Vancouver Winco stores. They can be hard to find. Sometimes they are just in the back half of a bin in the freezer, behind hash browns or some other potato item. But they are very good and super easy to do. They come in frozen pieces, as if they had put mashed potatoes in an ice cube tray. The bag tells you how many pieces to put in for the number of people you want to serve. Sounds perfect for your needs.
Jodi