Easy Homemade Fried Potatoes

I usually try to plan our next week's menus the day before I grocery.  That way, we stick to a budget and a healthier eating plan.  Are we flexible enough to deviate?  Well... when you find a sack of potatoes that you forgot you had purchased (and they're still in excellent shape)... you deviate from your planned side dishes and plan ahead a little.  

So this week, we had chicken breasts for 2 nights and then I had a package of pollack in the freezer for tonight.  I had planned long grain rice for both chicken nights.  As I went into my fabulous new kitchen cabinet that honey restored and refurbished for me (OMG!  I need to do a post on the cabinet!), I noticed a sack of small potatoes.  As I thought to myself, "when did I buy those?".  I also thought, "dang, I better use those before they go bad!".  

So we had rice one night and then I baked potatoes last night.  Thinking ahead, I baked 2 extra potatoes for fried potatoes tonight.  

So here's the simplest way to make yummy fried potatoes for 2: (of course do your potato count and onions based on family size)

Ingredients:

Leftover baked potatoes chopped (you could also quick bake your potatoes in the microwave prior to making these but they are easier to handle cold out of the fridge rather than hot out the microwave)

1/2 large sweet onion chopped

1 tbsp EVOO

Seasonings: 

onion powder

garlic powder

pepper

pink Himalayan sea salt

That's it!

Put your EVOO in your frying pan and heat on medium.  Add your potatoes and onions to warm pan, season, then stir up on the warm EVOO.   

Periodically mix the potatoes around to brown them nicely (about 15 minutes or so)

Enjoy as a side dish for any meal and also as yummy extra with weekend breakfast!

Easy Peasy Hash Browns and Easy Peasy Low Carb Hash Browns

It's a 2'fer!

I like 2 for 1's.  =)

This is a great side dish for many main courses like burgers, ham, and even breakfast! It's also an easy way to use up any leftover baked potatoes.

The low carb version uses butternut squash chunks.  This is not an original idea as many low carb diets make versions of this and season them with McCormick seasoning packets.  I control the sodium, seasoning them myself.

Thanks to the world of crash diets and grocery chains wanting to capitalize on that... you can now buy butternut squash already chunked in the fresh produce and also the frozen food section!  I LOVE that!  I'm not strong enough and I don't have good enough knives to cut a butternut myself.  PLUS, they are not easy to find!

Easy Peasy Hash Browns
Ingredients: For 1 serving
Leftover or cooled baked potato chunked
1/2 sweet onion coarsely chopped
Extra virgin olive oil 
Seasoning Salt or just salt & pepper

Easy Peasy Low Carb Hash Browns
Ingredients: For 1 serving
1 serving (maybe 1 cup) Butternut squash chunked
1/2 sweet onion coarsely chopped
Extra virgin olive oil 
Sriracha 1 -2 light squirt(s)
Seasoning Salt or just salt & pepper

Easy to prepare:
Heat up frying pan with about 1 tbsp EVOO.  Not too high of heat as EVOO should not be heated too hot for health reasons...

Add potato chunks and onions and coat with oil in pan

season lightly with the seasoning salt or salt & pepper.  add 1-2 squirts of Sriracha if you would like your hash browns to have a good bite to them.

Continue to cook on medium heat until browned.

Yummy Easy Peasy Hash Browns

Yummy Easy Peasy Low Carb Hash Browns

Enjoy!