Techniques: Breakfast Potatoes

This morning, I made some breakfast potatoes, mostly because I discovered a forlorn, half-empty bag of yellow roasting potatoes on top of the refrigerator. I guess "breakfast potatoes" is kind of a generic term- to me, they're bigger than hashbrowns, smaller than homefries. The point is, they're the right size to cook relatively quickly, without the hassle of grating (I don't even own a grater of the size appropriate for hashbrowns, and I suspect many others don't, either. Microplane rocks my world).

So how did I get good breakfast potatoes, without taking decades?

-Cut the potatoes in small (about 1/2cm), uniform cubes so they cook quickly in a pan. This can be the world's largest pain in the ass, or extremely fun, if your knife is sharp and you're a little OCD.

-Think about regulating the heat. First, preheat your pan and preferred fat source. I did butter, but there was a little pork fat residue in the skillet I could taste on the potatoes. This was a good thing. The big key is to preheat for way longer than you think you need to. Try a couple of minutes. Watch to make sure nothing spontaneously combusts. But you want that pan hot.

-Speaking of which, skillets. My personal opinion is that a nonstick skillet works just as well as my old-school cast iron. Sure, the one that's a pain to season and clean looks cooler, but I don't notice much difference. Maybe you'll get a little more color, faster, with the cast iron, but it seems cosmetic.

-Do you want them crispy? I did a mix of crispy and smushy. I started with high heat to develop some crispiness. The important part, however, is covering them so they'll steam and cook thoroughly faster. Preferably at lower heat, so they don't burn. If you want really crispy, start with the steaming and then crisp at the end. Mine were a happy medium.

For fun, I tossed a little freeze-dried green onion on top when I was done. They didn't overpower the delicate buttery potato flavors, and I didn't have to worry about food poisoning from fresh ones.