Gordon Ramsay's Genius Tip For The Most Flavorful Hash Browns

When making a typical American breakfast that features bacon, eggs, and a starch, celebrity chef and restaurant owner Gordon Ramsay relies on this trick to cook up the most delicious, tongue-tantalizing hash browns: use waxy potatoes. In a cooking session on Dabl Network, he explains that waxy potatoes cook better than other types of spuds. Their secret? They hold themselves together – an important consideration if you like those stick-together potato patties found in most American diners at breakfast time.

If you're cooking along with him in spirit, start your spud-making duties by peeling the potatoes and then grating them with a box grater. The same goes for a large white onion, which gets combined with the shredded taters. This move ensures that the flavor profile of the pungent vegetable permeates the whole batch of hash browns.

Once grated, the potatoes and onion go into a bowl for mixing. To this, you can add a blend of spices. Salt. Black pepper. Cayenne red pepper. All count among the spices that Chef Ramsay uses when he makes his own hash browns. A generous trickle of olive oil, churned into the mix with your hands, guarantees that the spices stick to every piece of grated potato and onion in the bowl. Finally, Ramsay advises home cooks to give the spuds a good squeeze over a colander to wring out as much water as possible. It makes for crispier taters.

A very hot pan followed by a "good glug" of olive oil, as he calls it on Dabl Network, kick off the cooking process for Ramsey's hash browns. The heat of the pan plays an important role because it creates the crispy, crunchy hash browns that home gourmands should be aiming for. If the potatoes sing a sizzling tune when they hit the pan, then you know it's hot enough.

As for getting the spuds out of the bowl and into the pan, Ramsay opts for efficiency by dropping them into the skillet with his hands — no utensils required. He then shapes the spud-and-onion mixture into a pan-sized patty. It's not that you can never use a spoon when you're making hash browns à la Ramsay. You can. Use a wooden one to clean up the edges of the mixture and pat it flat. This makes the hash browns more compact, ensuring the spuds get "glued" together.

There's one more trick Ramsay has up his sleeve, and it's one to adopt if you're after similar results. He places pats of butter all around the pan's edge. Take this step, and you'll end up with caramelized onions that rival the chef's. After the bottom of the spuds cook up crispy, place a large plate over the pan and flip it over. This slides the hash brown patty out of the pan in one piece. It then goes back into the pan, uncooked side down, until it's done.

Red or yellow potatoes not only make your favorite herbed potato salad recipe look gorgeous, but they're also what you should look for if you don't know what waxy potatoes look like. But it isn't just their red or yellow skins that give them away. Unlike the rough-skinned russet or Idaho potatoes you'd use when making baked potatoes, waxy potatoes boast smooth, shiny skins. Ramsay opts for yellow waxy potatoes in his recipe, though that's likely a personal preference. If you're a fan of red potatoes, go ahead and use them for your hash browns.

As for grating the potatoes and the white onion, choose the side of the box grater that sports the biggest holes. This you'll place over a plate to collect the grated pieces. In a pinch, you could use a food processor to grate the potatoes, though Ramsay went with a hand-held box grater to get the job done.

Once your spuds are done cooking, try them on their own with a bit of ketchup or sour cream. Or, if you're making a proper Ramsay-style American breakfast, leave the spuds in the pan, crack some eggs on top, and bake until the eggs are done. Slices of bacon fried in olive oil, brown sugar, and salt and pepper add the finishing touches to a breakfast that's best washed down by your favorite Keurig brew.