Southern Fried Potatoes

This week has been all about comfort food for me. I’ve been really homesick as I usually am this time of year so I’ve been fixing a lot of comfort food. Comfort food for me is the food my mama cooked, the southern staples, the food that was set on our dinner table on any given night. This week I have cooked tuna patties, my Aunt Martha’s shoepeg corn casserole, southern fried potatoes and banana pudding done Mom’s way. Mom was my paternal grandmother. I’m going to try to squeeze in a batch of chicken and dumplings too. Anyway, the other night I decided to have southern fried potatoes. I grew up eating this and it is the epitome of southern comfort food to me. It’s a real treat. Pook gets all excited when she finds out that we’re having them with dinner. Heck, I get all excited about having them with dinner, still. Even Dr. J loves them too. Buddy? He only eats certain things and potatoes in any form are not on that list. Yet. I’m determined.

I’ve seen various recipes for southern fried potatoes that call for extra ingredients added to them such as paprika, diced bell peppers and sautéed onions. That’s all fine and dandy but that’s not how my mama made them. When you start adding other ingredients it goes from being fried potatoes to some sort of potato hash or something. I like to keep things simple when I can. Sometimes, depending on the food, simple is better. It may just be my personal taste but I find when you start trying to get creative and start adding in a bunch of stuff then the food just gets too busy or it just masks the flavor. It’s like adding steak sauce to a nice thick juicy medium rare steak. However, if you do want to make it with the extra ingredients I would suggest cubing the potatoes instead of cutting them in to french fry shapes. So I figured I would share with y’all how my mama used to make this dish and how I make it now.

I’ll take you step by step through the process. All you need are three ingredients. Potatoes, oil and salt. First off though, you need a big cast iron skillet.

Rule #1: Everything is better cooked in cast iron.

Ingredients

• 2 lbs. of potatoes (any potato is fine, we prefer Yukon Golds)
• Cooking oil (we use Canola)
• Salt

Directions

1. First you want to wash and peel your potatoes
   
2. Next you’ll want to cut them into fries
   
3. Take 1/4 cup or 4 TBS of oil and poor it into the pan
   
4. Heat the oil on medium. Now, here is the golden rule for frying anything. Get the oil hot hot hot. You want the oil to be at least 350. It helps if you have a thermometer that you can use.
   
5. Put in the potatoes and stir them around to coat them with the oil.
   
6. To get the potatoes done just right you have to cover them with a lid. This is the secret trick. The heat from the oil crisps the part of the potatoes touching the pan and the lid keeps the other side soft. Once you have the lid on you’ll want to stir every few minutes and re-cover. This helps break some of the potatoes down plus it gives you a good mix of crispy and soft potatoes. Dr. J likes them mostly crispy but I prefer the mix.
   
7. Once it starts looking like this then you’re good to go. You can keep cooking it a little longer if you want more of the brown crispy potatoes. I always just eyeball it.
   
8. Once they are done place them on a plate lined with paper towels to soak up the extra oil. Salt immediately while the potatoes are still hot so that the salt sticks
9. Southern fried potatoes
   

Now, I’m curious to know. What is a dish that you consider comfort food and why?