Waffle Maker Home Fries
Waffle Maker Home Fries: This is the way to make crispy home fries easily using your waffle maker!
Waffle Maker Home Fries
Jump to RecipeI would say I use my waffle iron for waffles only, like, 40% of the time. The rest of the time I’m smashing other stuff in it to figure out what I can cook on it. Most waffle irons are super flexible and can work as a panini maker or a ton of other uses.
But breakfast potatoes. That’s where the waffle maker really excels! I’ve made hash browns with them with great success. But these home fries are even easier than hash browns, honestly.
I love the final texture of these waffle maker home fries and in my opinion good home fries are all about the texture. They should be light and fluffy on the inside, but have lots of crispy edges. A waffle maker is pretty much ideal for making them.
Waffle Maker Home Fries
Equipment
Ingredients
- 2 pounds new potatoes boiled and smashed
- 1 teaspoon chili powder
- 1 teaspoon paprika
- ½ teaspoon garlic powder
- 1 teaspoon kosher salt
- 1 teaspoon black pepper
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- Fresh chives garnish
- Ketchup garnish
Instructions
- Bring a large pot of salted water to a simmer. Add potatoes and boil until they are fork tender, about 10 minutes.
- Let potatoes cool slightly and then use a kitchen mallet to lightly smash them.
- Season smashed potatoes with chili powder, paprika, salt, pepper, and garlic powder. Season them liberally.
- Drizzle potatoes with olive oil and spread them out on a pre-heated waffle iron. Close the iron and let cook for 5-6 minutes until they are very crispy. The exact time might change depending on your waffle iron. Check them occasionally.
- When the potatoes reach your desired crispiness, remove them with a fork and do another batch. Serve home fries with ketchup and/or hot sauce!
Nutrition
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- Want crispy potatoes? Try these Homemade Latkes!
Waffle Maker Home Fries
Of course, you’ll need potatoes to make these bad boys. Make your life easy by using these smaller new potatoes. Under no circumstances should you try to cook raw potatoes in a waffle maker. Will not work. So just boil the potatoes until they are fork tender in salted water. Depending on the size of your potatoes, that should be somewhere in the 8-10 minute range.
If you have the very small potatoes, you can keep them whole or you can chop them in half.
Once the potatoes are boiled, it’s time to take out some aggression. Smash ’em!
They don’t have to be pretty obviously. You just want them roughly the same thickness. Then season them really heavily with a mix of salt, pepper, paprika, chili powder, and garlic powder. Drizzle them with a little oil also and they should be ready to go!
Preheat your waffle iron and now you’re ready to rock. Spread out the potatoes in an even layer. You can really go all the way to the edges because obviously the potatoes won’t expand like a waffle batter.
Then waffle them!
Depending on your waffle iron, they should take somewhere between 5-7 minutes to get to ideal home fry texture. Feel free to open up the waffle maker and check on them, but don’t mess with them too much! Just let them get nice and crispy.
You’ll probably have to use a fork to scoop out the home fries, but they shouldn’t stick at all assuming you have a good nonstick waffle iron.
I like mine with a little fresh chives and some hot sauce, but you could go the ketchup route also obviously!
You can definitely waffle home fries and they are very worth waffling!
- Want an easy potato breakfast? Try these Breakfast Potato Cups!
hello, tonight’s dinner :)
What a neat trick , really like the textures . Tried them two ways ; hot sauce & chives ,
ketchup and Vandalia onions ***
Both very good , thanks for the idea , my family can now enjoy an additional breakfast side . By the way , it’s our favorite eat-together meal of the day .
Waffles and waffle irons aren’t a big thing in Australia. Could this be done with a toasted sandwich maker instead?
Absolutely definitely doing this one!! We have a “double” waffle iron (I feed a ton of people) and I can’t wait to see how it goes! Thanks for the great idea, Nick!
Awesome! Hope they work for you Heather! I also have a double iron and pumped these out pretty quickly. :) Good luck!
Welllllllllll Nick, mine didn’t quite look like yours—:–))
Our problem, we have a vertical waffle iron—-AND GRAVITY takes over–
was able to make some–good
will try with the iron on its side for loading—(it do get hot :–)) )
Our Golden’s helped with all I messed up—–they thought it was great–
it was fun,
gordon
Stowe, Vermont
ps-next time will try some with B grade maple syrup
Hey Gordon! Oh man… I didn’t even think about the vertical iron… ha! Yea… gravity might get ya on that one… At least you had a four-legged helper for clean up. ;)
Hi Nick,
I’m wondering if one could use leftover mashed potatoes in this instead of boiling up a whole new batch of potatoes. All I typically add to my potatoes before they are mashed is some butter, salt, pepper and some liquid to make them come together a bit. Thoughts?
Thanks,
Jenny
Hey Jenny,
So I’ve tried to do this with leftover mashed from Thanksgiving and it sometimes works… if you have starchy/thick potatoes it should work, but if you have a smoother mash (that’s what I usually go for) then it will be too much liquid and they will just spill out over the sides as they heat up… usually I think the extra dairy in mashed potatoes ends up not working too well on the waffle iron. Hope that helps!
Check out the Serious Eats waffled mashed potatoes. They’re AMAZING.
http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2014/11/waffled-mashed-potatoes-bacon-cheddar-recipe.html
A definite favouirte in my house! Though, we’ve since adapted it into what we call a ‘Spicy Smash’… instead of using the waffle maker, we gently smash it all together in a frying pan (using fresh garlic and diced onions to knock it up a notch!) & then pop it in the oven to grill the top. Brilliant flavour, and still nice and crispy ;)