One of the many things I miss from my childhood years is the smell of potatoes frying. Mom would grease up the cast iron skillet and fry up a large platter of fried potatoes which we generally had with beans and cornbread.
Recently, I tried my hand at frying potatoes (I’ve found it therapeutic), and as good as they have turned out, they don’t hold a candle to those I remember eating so long ago. Frying potatoes, as mundane of a task as it would seem, is an art form.
First you have to cut them at the right thickness. Slices that are two thin will burn too easily. If you slice your potatoes too thickly, they will take forever to cook.
You also have to use hot oil/grease. Sure, margarine is better for you, but you get better results with the real deal. Cooking spray is not much better. So if you are having breakfast meat, fry your ham, eggs, sausage, or goetta first and then fry the potatoes. Leave the drippings and enough of the grease to coat the skillet, but drain the excess.
With regards to skillets, I’m convinced that cast iron is the optimum cookware for this task. Aluminum is garbage and Teflon cookware is not much better. Copper would probably work well, but I don’t have the money to invest in copper cookware or the patience to maintain it. Your cookware should be able to take some hard knocks and abuse.
Fry small batches of potatoes at a time. Do not attempt to place several layers of potatoes in the skillet and think they will all cook uniformly. You will end up with some that are burned and some that are still raw, regardless of how much you try to flip them around.
Finally, do not leave them unattended. Besides the fact that you are leaving a heated skillet filled with hot grease on the stove unsupervised, it is a good way to ruin a good batch of potatoes (in the event you don’t trigger a four alarm fire!)
This concludes my culinary lesson for the day.
Posted by -kf 
