Homemade Hashbrowns

Since my recent attempt at freezing avocados (tutorial here) was such a simple and successful project, I decided to roll the dice and yet again.. and I'm so glad I did!

My cute little local store where I bought the avocados for such a steal the other day also had a 10 pound bag of potatoes on sale for 89 cents!  Too good to pass up I bought a bag, but with my hubby out of town and me attempting to really give my all to my dive into the world of "CrossFit" workouts (my sore muscles are hating me, but that's for another post) potatoes unfortunately are not really my friends right now.  So not wanting to waste my great bargain like I usually do I decided to try freezing them.

There are a lot of great posts on the web that call for peeling, soaking and or boiling, I decided instead to take the easy route and just gave them all a good scrub and a few pokes to help them cook.

Then right onto the oven rack at 350 degrees.

Bake until they are soft, the time will depend on the size of your oven mine only took about 30 minutes.

Now let them cool, then grab a grater and shred away.  The beauty of being lazy and leaving the peels on is it gave me something to hold onto saving my fingers from the blades.  Plus, the potatoes basically peeled themselves because the flesh shredded easily and most of peel stayed in my hand.  

To keep your hashbrowns from becoming a potato brick in the freezer spread them in a thin layer on baking sheets and freeze for about an hour then transfer to freezer bags.  This gives the pieces a chance to start to freeze before being smashed into a bag.  If you skip this part, like I'm sure I would if I was reading this I can't imagine there would be a big problem you will probably just have to take them out of the freezer a little sooner to give them an extra chance to thaw before trying to work with them. 

We don't eat hashbrowns very often, but they sure are nice to have in the freezer when you have company or need to throw together a last minute meal.  For 89 cents, and barely any work I got three big gallon ziplock bags full of already cooked, ready to use potatoes.... not too shabby!  

So next time you see a great deal or have potatoes that are destined for the trash, heat up your oven, grab a box grater and save them... and the day!

Enjoy,