Oven Fried Potatoes

In our house a favorite treats is fried potatoes.  These can be hashed brown potatoes.  They can be French-fried potatoes.  They can be diced potatoes.  They can be thinly slice potatoes.  Any potato, bathed in grease of some kind, and brought to a golden brown, is just what is wanted on a pretty regular basis.  We never don't have potatoes lying around waiting to be turned into a densely calorie bit of tasty heaven.  Sad, but true.

Well...recently I was watching an episode of America's Test Kitchen where they were making oven fried potatoes.  This seemed like a likely possibility so I got started really soon after watching.

This is what I did:

1. Scrub several pounds of russet potatoes then cut into 1/2 inch slices.  Yes, this does see like they are too thick, but trust me, they are perfect.

2. Place a large rimmed pan in the oven at 450 degrees F. to preheat.

3.  Put the potatoes in a big pot and cover with water by only a little.  Bring to a boil.  Reduce heat and let simmer until potatoes are nearly, but not quite,  cooked.  This will take about 5-6 minutes.

4.  Drain potatoes and return to pot. Drizzle 2 Tablespoons of vegetable oil and 1 teaspoon of kosher salt over the potatoes and gently stir to cover potatoes with the oil and salt.  When done, drizzle 2 MORE Tablespoons vegetable oil and 1 MORE teaspoon of salt over potatoes and again gently fold them to get the potatoes coated with the oil and salt.  By this time there will seem to be some sort of smeary stuff on the outside of the potatoes.  This is the starch, which is your friend here.

5.  Carefully removed heated pan from the oven, add 1 Tablespoon of vegetable oil to the pan and dump on the potatoes and form a single layer .  Return pan to oven and bake for 10 minutes then turn pan around in the oven.  Bake another 10 minutes, until bottoms of potatoes are nicely browned.  Remove pan from oven and carefully turn over each potato slice so the other side can become brown.  Return to oven and let bake another 10-15 minutes.

They are delicious.  They disappear really quickly!