National Hash Brown Day
Today is National Hash Brown Day, which seems like a perfectly reasonable excuse to cook a pile of them.
Hash browns have been part of the American breakfast for more than a century. The name comes from the French word “hacher”, meaning to chop. In the late nineteenth century restaurants began serving what were called “hashed brown potatoes,” chopped or shredded potatoes fried until crisp. They appeared on hotel breakfast menus and quickly spread to diners and restaurants across the country.
The modern hash brown patty, however, is a much newer development.
Many people associate the familiar patty with McDonald’s, where the crisp rectangular hash brown became one of the most recognizable breakfast sides in America.
But the frozen food industry actually got there first.
In the 1960s frozen potato company Ore-Ida introduced frozen hash brown patties as part of the expanding frozen convenience food market. Shredded potatoes were formed into patties that could go directly from the freezer to the oven or pan. When McDonald’s launched its national breakfast program in the early 1970s, the frozen patty format worked perfectly for restaurant kitchens and quickly became associated with the chain.
For this photograph I cooked a batch of frozen hash brown patties and piled them onto their packaging, a small nod to their frozen food origins. A few broken pieces reveal the soft shredded potato interior beneath the crisp exterior.
Not bad for something that started as chopped potatoes in a hotel kitchen and ended up in the frozen food aisle.
You can see more of my Commercial Food Photography on my website at…
https://www.secondfocus.com/index/G0000WFAqDJQOgKU
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