What’s the Distinction Between Hash Browns and Dwelling Fries?

Ordering breakfast at a diner is rife with choices. Fried or scrambled eggs? White or wheat toast? Pancakes or waffles? However essentially the most daunting selection going through patrons may simply be the potatoes: hash brown or dwelling fries.

Even when you order your aspect of selection, it’s potential the potatoes in your plate aren’t precisely what you pictured. That’s as a result of no two breakfast potatoes are the identical. We requested six cooks who focus on breakfast to outline hash browns and residential fries. Whereas their solutions diverse barely, all of them agreed on just a few issues that exemplify these beloved diner sides.

What are hash browns?

Hash browns are available two distinct varieties, however they’re at all times fried till they’re golden brown and crispy. In case you’re ordering hash browns at a diner or café, they’re most probably going to be made with shredded or finely chopped potatoes (“hash” comes from the French phrase “hacher,” that means “to cut”). 

“After I make hash browns at dwelling, I simply grate the potato and mush it down within the pan,” says 2022 F&W Finest New Chef Caroline Schiff, who’s opening a diner in 2026. “I let it get actually brown and crispy, flip it over, and season it with somewhat salt. I hold it quite simple.”

Chad Conley, co-owner of Palace Diner in Biddeford, Maine, refers to this hash brown methodology as “Waffle Home-style.” “It’s mushy on the within, after which crispy across the edges,” he says. To make crispy, diner-style hash browns at dwelling, begin by soaking shredded russet potatoes [in cold water] to take away a few of the starch — this helps them fry up good and crunchy. 

Different hash browns include potatoes which are diced and formed right into a patty earlier than getting deep-fried. The result’s akin to a big, flat tater tot. “You’ll be able to decide up the entire thing and dip it in ketchup,” says Conley. Whereas the end result can be scrumptious, making your personal hash brown patties might be laborious and time-consuming. Many cooks, like Jackie Carnesi at Kellogg’s Diner in Brooklyn, New York, will decide to supply them frozen and ready-to-fry in order that they’re practically similar to what you’d get at McDonald’s. Why mess with perfection?

What are dwelling fries?

In case you ask 100 folks what dwelling fries appear like, odds are they’ll all have a barely completely different reply. Cubed or sliced, mushy or crispy, with peppers or with out — the variability is endless. Variations apart, most cooks can agree that to make them, the potatoes should be reduce (not shredded), par-cooked, and griddled. 

“Dwelling fries are par-cooked, chunked up potatoes with the pores and skin on or not, heated up on a griddle, both crisped up or not, and seasoned or not,” says Conley. When Carnesi makes her dwelling fries at Kellogg’s, she blanches then roasts the potatoes earlier than closely seasoning them; Schiff prefers to organize them on a griddle with onion and peppers.

For selfmade dwelling fries which are crisp and golden on the skin and tender on the within, boil the potatoes earlier than crisping them in a pan, then end them with butter, chili powder, and garlic.