How To Mess With Classic Fried Potatoes With This Surprising Ingredient
Who doesn’t like fried potatoes? I’m going to take a wild guess and boldly say that no one can.
Fried potatoes are comforting, crispy outside and soft and warm inside. They are a fantastic channel for all sorts of flavour. They are cheap and easy to make. They can be dressed down or up depending on your humour. Most countries in the world have a take on the humble fried potatoes.
I love potatoes. Fried potatoes, boiled potatoes, roasted potatoes, potatoes in a salad, anyway you can have them, I will love them. I do a mean dish of spiced potatoes with spinach, which when I’m well organised will come straight out of the garden. Only problem is that I’ve not planted spuds this year and I suspect it’s now too late.
A couple of months ago, I was at the Asian Market, in Drury st, in Dublin. I shopped there as I always do, which is to say I bought the good old reliable staples: bags of pickled ginger because I can’t live without the stuff, asian greens, rice supplies, a couple of jars of tom yum paste and lots of dumplings for the freezer but I also bought a couple of new bits. This is what I do every time I go there as it allows me to stretch out of my cooking comfort zone. This is how I keep myself on my cooking toes.
Once I come back from my Asian excursions, feeling like a hero, it normally takes me a couple of months to start playing with my new toys. Life gets in the way and I can simply have put them too far in the back of the press and plain forgotten about them. Bad Katia. Anyway, I digress, let’s get back to my fried potatoes.
This month’s ingredient was red miso paste. It’s been sitting on the top shelf of the fridge looking at me, tempting and making me feel bad for not knowing what to do with it from the bat. So I did what I often do in this case, I went and bothered my pals in our foodie Facebook Group. Do feel free to join by the way, it’s a fun, friendly environment where people post photos of their dinners and chat about random food stuff. I love it. Anyhow, I went to the guys and ask them what I should be doing with my miso and they came flooding at me with their delicious ideas. First, I stirred fried some leaks with it and that was absolutely gorgeous but it gave me a notion for more which is why I decided to incorporate it in that night’s dinner which was to be griddled chorizo with a side dish of fried potatoes.
It’s also the season for wild garlic and I’m very lucky to have some in the back garden. Wild garlic is an absolute treat when stirred through a dish of delicious cooked spuds.
Ingredients
- 500 grams of spuds
- 1 onion
- 2 table spoons of ghee (clarified butter)
- 1 table spoon of vegetable oil
- 1 heaped table spoon of red miso paste
- 1 table spoon of cracked black pepper
- 1 handful of wild garlic leaves
Good To Know
- Red miso paste keeps in the fridge a fair few months at a time.
- Although it costs an arm and a leg in irish shops, it’s really cheap in the Asian Market (under a fiver for 500 g).
- Build up the miso flavour. It’s easier to add to it than trying to take it back down.
- I find that waxy potatoes are best for frying as they keep a somewhat firm texture throughout the cooking process. If you use floury potatoes they are likely to end up in a bit messy albeit tasty mush.
Method
- Pour the vegetable oil on a pan and heat it up to medium heat.
- Add your chopped onion and reduce the heat. Cook it for 10 min while stirring it often to avoid burning. Caramelised onions good, burnt onions are not.
- Add your chopped spuds and stir. Fry for another 5 min until the bottom of the spuds start to crips and colour.
- Add half a glass of water and the table spoon of miso and toss it until the miso mixture is melted and coats the potatoes and onions.
- Reduce the heat right down, cover the pan and let it cook on low heat for 20 min. You can add another half glass of water if the first one evaporates too fast.
- Once all the liquid is gone, add your two table spoons of ghee and let it melt. Add another half a glass of water and let the potatoes cook until they are shiny and golden and all the liquid is gone.
- At this stage, the fried potatoes are nearly ready, all you need to do is to take them off the heat and toss the wild garlic through them until it’s wilted down.
- Sprinkle with the black pepper before serving.
Join me soon for some more miso adventures and please leave me a comment for miso suggestions.
4 Comments
They look great Katia! Miso is on my list of ‘must experiment with’ ingredients. Are you’re right, who couldn’t love fried potateos?!
I’m gonna be honest here, I don’t cook very much at all and have no idea what ghee or misogyny paste is but I LOVE fried potatoes and from the sounds and looks for it this is bound to taste fabulous ππ
Ama Addo / Albatroz & Co
http://www.albatrozandco.com
That was to be miso and not misogyny π
SMASH THE PATRIARCHY!
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