Yesterday's Potatoes
Cooked potatoes from the day before are firmer than fresh ones, and therefore superior in the pan.
- Preparation
- 10 min
- Cook/bake time
- 20 min
- Total
- 30 min
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Calories
Cooked potatoes from the day before are firmer than fresh ones, and therefore superior in the pan. What looks like a makeshift solution is actually the better starting point. Overnight, the starch partially crystallizes, and this is exactly what keeps the slices intact during frying. Fried potatoes made from freshly cooked potatoes fall apart.
Why this works
During cooking, potato starch swells and binds water. The cells are plump and fall apart easily under mechanical stress. When the potato cools down, this starch rearranges itself and partially crystallizes. This is called retrogradation. The slices become firmer, release water, and can be fried without falling apart. This is the same process that makes fried rice possible in the first place. The second point is patience in the pan. A crust only forms if the slices lie still on the hot metal for long enough. If you turn them every twenty seconds, you keep tearing off the forming crust and end up with soft, greasy potatoes after twenty minutes. And the onion is added late because it would have burned long ago in twenty minutes.
Step-by-step instructions
- 1
Cut the potatoes
Peel the cold potatoes and cut them into slices half a centimeter thick. When cold, they can be cut cleanly. When warm, the knife crushes them, and the fragments turn into puree in the pan.
- 2
Fry in one layer
Heat the clarified butter in a wide pan and place the slices in it in a single layer. Now do not touch them for five minutes. The crust only forms when the slice lies still on the hot metal. Every turn tears it off before it is finished.
- 3
Turn once
Turn the slices and fry them for another five minutes. If the pan is too small, work in two batches. Slices lying on top of each other steam each other and never turn brown.
- 4
Add onions and bacon
Add the onion rings, bacon, and caraway seeds and fry everything for another five minutes. The onion is deliberately added late. Over the entire frying time, it would have turned black long ago. Finally, season with salt and pepper and fold in the parsley.
Our best tips
- Potatoes must be cold and from the day before. Freshly cooked ones contain too much bound water and fall apart into puree in the pan.
