Preparing fried potatoes is very easy - with the tips of the professional chefs from the kitchen. We'll show you step by step and answer all your questions about the perfect fried potatoes.
Fried potatoes for 4 portions
Ready in 80 min
Ingredients for fried potatoes:
- 1-kilogram potatoes (small, firm boiling)
- Salt
- 100 grams bacon (smoked and marbled; sliced)
- 1 onion
- 50 grams of clarified butter
Preparation of the fried potatoes:
- Thoroughly brush the potatoes and boil them with skin in salted water for about 20 minutes. Drain, let it steam briefly, and remove the skin from the hot potatoes. Let the potatoes cool down completely (preferably overnight) and then cut them into 3-4 mm thick and even potato slices.
- Cut the bacon into cubes of about 4 mm. Peel the onion and dice it as well. Heat the clarified butter in a large pan. Put potatoes into the pan and fry them from the bottom side until brown.
- Reduce the heat, tilt the pan, and turn the potatoes. If possible, do not stir, because the slices will quickly break. When all potatoes are lightly brown all around, sprinkle bacon and onion cubes over the potatoes. Finish frying the fried potatoes by turning them several times. Salt them at the end. Be careful, the bacon is also salty!
Tip: Potatoes must "rustle" in the pan, i.e. they should be crisp and not greasy. To do this, they must be fried and tossed in the pan for a sufficiently long time, at least 20 minutes.
Fried potatoes - crispy, tasty, versatile!
...there are many delicious recipes with the roasted potatoes. Here you can find out how they are guaranteed to succeed!
Fried potatoes: Which potatoes?
For fried potatoes, waxy potatoes are best suited. They do not contain quite as much starch and therefore retain their structure when cooked. The following varieties are recommended:
- Trout
- Hansa
- Linda
- Sieglinde
- Nicola
- Selena
Boil potatoes for fried potatoes
For fried potatoes, small and equally sized potato tubers are best suited. The tubers must be brushed off thoroughly with a brush. Then let them boil in salted water for about 20 minutes. A teaspoon of caraway or a bay leaf can be added to the cooking water as desired. The potatoes are cooked when they can be pierced easily and stick to the knife.
When the potatoes are cooked, the tubers are drained. As long as they are still as hot as possible, the skin is peeled off. This allows the water to evaporate better - so they become firmer and can be cut into slices more easily later. The jacket potatoes must now cool down completely or better still stand in the refrigerator for another night so that they are well cooled.
Slice potatoes for fried potatoes
The potatoes are cut into approximately three to four millimeters thick and even slices. If the potato slices are thinner, they break easily. The more uniform the potato slices are, the more evenly they can be fried.
The right pan for fried potatoes
For crispy fried potatoes, use a pan as large as possible so that each individual fried potato has ground contact and can become nice and crispy. A thick pan bottom is also important, which stores a lot of heat and also distributes it evenly - otherwise, the potatoes will burn in a corner. Cast iron is great but is now rarely used and is too heavy to swing. Good are coated pans in which nothing sticks, but which can still be heated to a high temperature.
The right fat for crispy fried potatoes
Because the fat must be very hot, the best choice is clarified butter, tasteless vegetable oil, or a mixture of butter and oil. Before the potatoes are placed in the pan, the fat must be very hot. If the fat was not hot enough, the fried potatoes become greasy: they soak up the fat and no longer turn brown.
Fried potatoes: Preparation
Add the potatoes to the fat in the pan and let them fry until the pieces at the bottom of the pan turn brown. When the slices are brown, take the handle of the pan in both hands and toss the potatoes with a vigorous swing to raise them slightly and put them back in the pan. If possible, do not stir with a turner, because the slices break easily. It is best to practice tossing with a slice of lemon in the pan beforehand.
Bacon and onions for fried potatoes
For fried potatoes, use smoked and streaky bacon, which is cut into cubes of about four millimeters. Tip: Do not use bacon, because the thin slices quickly become hard. Peel and halve the onion and cut it into even cubes - they should be about the same size as the diced bacon.
Bacon and onions are only added when the fried potatoes are lightly brown. Sprinkle the dices over the whole pan so that they are well distributed before the next tossing. The bacon should be brown on the outside, but still soft. If it roasts too long, the cubes become hard. The onion cubes are perfect when they are glassy and slightly browned at the edges.
Season the fried potatoes
The bacon already gives the potatoes a lot of salt, but that is often not enough. That's why you should try a little bit and maybe add some seasoning. For this purpose, sprinkle salt and pepper over the whole pan and distribute it as finely as possible.
Keep fried potatoes warm
If you want to pre-fry the potatoes and keep them warm afterward, you can put the light brown potatoes in the fat pan of the oven and keep them hot at about 100 degrees. Shortly before the fried potatoes are to be served, they are fried again briefly in the pan until crispy.
Professional tips for fried potatoes from Lea Linster
Professional chef Lea Linster tells how she was supposed to prepare ham with fried potatoes for almost 80 people. However, since a bottleneck was becoming apparent with the ham, the fried potatoes had to be particularly tasty as a side dish. No problem for the cook, because her fried potatoes became the hit: "So I had a huge number of potatoes peeled and then roughly diced. Then they were placed in many large pots in cold, lightly salted water because you shouldn't cook too many together. After all, otherwise, they would break down more easily".
Lea Linster also has a few tips for the last few steps: "I then put all the fried potatoes on large baking trays and sprinkled plenty of bay leaves over them. Finally, I put the fried potatoes into the oven sheet by sheet, where they get a very pleasant crust". The result was truly impressive: "The calculation worked out perfectly: I don't think our fried potatoes had ever been so successful, and the ham was sliced wonderfully thin, and it was not at all noticeable that it was so rare.