Good morning, star shine. The Earth says hello.
Some of you might be saying to yourself, “Fat Girl, this post is a day late!” Well, maybe it is and maybe it isn’t. If you’re anything like my friends, you’ll have used the fact that today is a work holiday to celebrate New Year’s Eve from 5pm Saturday until about 2am today. Which makes this post perfectly timed.
Granted, I’m bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at 6:08am because it’s really hard to get tipsy on a flute of Martinelli’s Sparkling Apple Cider – unless you’re diabetic, I guess. So, while I haven’t used any of these pick-me-ups in years, they’re what helped me way back when. And what I’ll be making later this morning, just as soon as some people wake up.
Hair of the Dog
Once, a very long time ago, my dad taught me that when you feel like death warmed over, the quickest way to feel less death-y is to take one single measured medicinal dose of whatever you got drunk on the night before. If you mostly got blasted on Cosmos, measure out 1oz of vodka; on scotch (ew), measure out 1oz of scotch. If you got wasted on a ton of different hard-alcohol mixed drinks, take a shot of whatever you think you drank the most of last night. If you drank a crap-ton of soft alcohol, like beer or winecoolers (48 of those and you are flying), you’re medicinal dose is 4oz, and again, try your best to make it the same as what you mostly got ripped on.
My personal improvement (improvement? That’s a little sad) on this trick is to follow that shot as fast as you can with 4 ibuprofen and 16oz of cool water. And prayer – lots of prayer.
Adventures in Solids
About an hour after the above treatment, you should feel a little less zombie-ish, and more able to withstand the onslaught of solid foods. I wouldn’t recommend driving anyplace, and most delivery places probably aren’t open yet of course (those b^st^rds). Which means you’ll have to brave the perils of your kitchen. But it’ll be worth it.
DON’T DO EGGS. Maybe it’s just because I’m not what you’d call an ‘egg person’, but just skip those potentially-slimy, shell-fragment-laced ick-factories. ::shivers::
BACON IS YOUR FRIEND. Turn your oven to 350°, lay out rashers of bacon (yes, a slice of bacon is technically called a rasher) in a single layer on a wire rack sitting in a lipped pan and bake for 20-25 minutes, or until it reaches your preferred level of crispiness.
SO ARE HASHBROWNS. You’ll need
- Potatoes (preferably red)
- A grater (and a cut-resistant glove for your drunken hand)
- A non stick pan
- Salt/pepper
- A stick of butter, melted in a easy-to-drizzle-from container of some sort
After you put your bacon into the oven, wash your potatoes and grate them – skin on, whether you use red potatoes or not. Also, try not to grate your fingertips off.
Drizzle enough melted butter into your pan to just barely coat the bottom. Don’t do that fancy swishy-swirly thing chefs do, though. You’ll drop the pan on your toe and butter will go everywhere. Just pour it in until it’s about 1/16th of an inch deep.
Place your pan over medium heat. Sprinkle in your potato-and-not-finger shreds into the pan until the pan has potato all over the bottom and the shreds are all interlaced, but not so densely that you can’t still see the bottom of the pan.
Your pan should have half as much shredded potato as this, spread out over the same area. Via VeganYumYum.com
We want lots of crispy golden-brown outsides and not a lot of soft insides. Red potatoes hold together better when cooked, which is why you should use them to begin with. Cover with a lid (so long as the lid fits over the potatoes, it can be bigger or smaller than the pan itself with no worries).
Cook over medium heat without peeking/touching/stirring for 4 minutes. You are not yourself, so set a timer or something. Preferably loud enough to scare the crap outta you if you fall asleep on the couch while you’re waiting.
Check on the hashbrowns. If they are golden brown and delicious on the bottom, carefully use 1-2 spatulas to flip the lacey hashbrown-cake over. Drizzle on aother 1-2oz of melted butter. Re-lid and cook another 4 minutes.
Bonus points for AWESOME spatulas. Via GeekAlerts.com
By the time your hashbrowns are done, your bacon should be done too. Eat as many plates of this delicious, tasty, greasy food as you can. There’s no upper maximum to the number of rashers and/or pans of hashbrowns you should eat. Every iteration will make you feel that much more human again.
I would stop before you puke, though. Yeah, that’s about the only restriction there is.
@Kathy - Yeah, I've heard that, too. I've never done it, honestly, because I never needed to. I'm super lazy; I go straight from the grater to the fry pan, and mine are always hyper-crispy, sometimes ALMOST too crispy. Then again, most people make hashbrowns with russets, and I use reds. Maybe russets are 'wetter' than reds?
Posted by: Jena, the Fat Girl | 01/11/2012 at 09:48 AM
FYI for the patotoes post grater, pre skillet.... pressing them with a dry paper towel gets all the extra water out...letting them get crisper....something I learned from alton brown
Posted by: Kathy | 01/10/2012 at 08:08 PM