French Fry Diary 316: Trader Joe's Shredded Hash Browns

This year The Bride and I decided to do something different on Christmas Eve. Not just running around last minute shopping and gift wrapping, that is. As our meals for Christmas Day had been all planned out already, and our traditional Christmas morning breakfast had been traded out for IHOP, we decided we'd have the regular Christmas morning breakfast for dinner Christmas Eve night.

So along with the traditional ham, there was also -who would have thought it- breakfast potatoes. Not wanting to do a lot of work, I got frozen, and wanting to make The Bride happy, I got shredded as it's her favorite kind. I myself prefer diced, or especially sliced, but I kinda like her and all, ya know?

In this case I got Trader Joe's Shredded Hash Browns. I cut the bag open at the side, but should have looked closer. They have a handy zip lock opening for resealing and later use. Great innovation. Now why doesn't Trader Joe's have those for their notoriously unopenable potato chips?

I have to give Trader Joe's props on these potatoes. They were individual shreddings, almost matchstick fries. Usually this kind of breakfast potatoes when come in chunks that have to be broken up, but not these. I'm tempted to try to deep fry them or bake them as matchstick fries next time.

They fried up rather quickly. I recommend frying a few slices of bacon in the pan first to give the potatoes that flavor, but using cooking oil works too. Flipping and patting the potatoes a few times is all that's needed for perfect breakfast potatoes. I did burn the second batch a little but that's okay, The Bride likes them like that. It was a good meal, and a good Christmas Eve.