Crisp, Delish Hash Browns
Without a drop of oil! (Pancakes, too.)
There’s a new study out comparing people on diets that include more olive oil (like the Mediterranean Diet) with the same people on the same diets that include less olive oil, and finding that less is healthier.
To which I say, “Duh.”
Every single beneficial ingredient in olive oil is also in olives. And if you eat the olive, you get all the other ingredients that mitigate any harmful impact from the olive’s fat.
But with olive oil everything is stripped from the olive except the fat. This is not the way nature designed olives to be eaten. If nature wanted us eating oil, trees would grow oil instead of fruit, or bleed oil instead of sap.
Oil is bad for heart health. Period. Bad, bad, bad, no matter what the studies say. Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn is one of the greatest cardiologists this country has ever produced, head of cardiology at the Cleveland Clinic for most of his career, and patients on his program don’t consume or cook with oil or eat foods that contain oil as an ingredient.
But you don’t have to give up crisp, golden brown goodness. You just have to learn how to get it without oil.
Here’s how I did it Thursday morning with hash browns and pancakes for my hubs birthday breakfast.
Hash Browns
Ingredients
About 1 pound shredded/grated potatoes (I bought frozen, pre-cut hash browns, but check ingredients. Most have added oil. These did not. Seek those with just one ingredient: potatoes, or else shred your own potatoes.)
Garlic powder
Onion powder
Rosemary
Salt substitute
Pepper
Preheat oven to 425º F. I have an air-bake and air-fry setting, and I used both in this recipe, but you can do just as well with a hot oven on a low rack.
Line a baking sheet with a silicone mat or parchment paper.
Spread the potatoes in as near a single layer as space permits.
Sprinkle with onion powder, garlic powder, and dust with a little bit of rosemary. A little goes a long way. Then scatter your favorite salt-substitute.
No pepper yet.
Bake for 15 minutes at 425, but take them out and rearrange every 5 minutes or so! They get crispiest around the edges.
Ff you have an air fry setting, switch to it for a final 3-4 minutes, no longer. If you’re using a regular oven, 5 to 7 more minutes at 425.
After removing from oven, sprinkle with fresh black pepper
Boom. Crispy, golden hash browns.
Pancakes
My perfect pancake recipe is made with a whole grain gluten free flour blend, and you can find both those recipes in detail HERE.
A quick recap: 2 cups flour with 1 teaspoon each cinnamon and baking powder, mixed together.
1 cup soy milk with 1 cup water, 1 teaspoon vanilla, 2 tablespoons maple syrup, mixed together.
Then combine the two.
Don’t overmix or they’ll be tough. Just get it well-blended.
Heat the frying pan at a bit above medium heat until a drop of water beads up and dances. When it’s hot, spoon in the batter for three pancakes at a time.
Cook until the tops are entirely covered in bubbles, and then flip, cook another minute or or two, no longer.
Serve covered in any chopped berries or fruits you desire, and, of course, maple syrup.
That’s today’s post. More to come on that olive oil study. I know study after study tells you olive oil improves heart health or a hundred other things. But the key is to understand what they’re comparing their olive oil diets to. When compared to the standard American diet, the Mediterranean is vastly healthier, not because of the olive oil but because it includes far less meat, dairy, and ultra processed crap. But compare a plant-based diet without olive oil to one with it, with the same subjects, and you finally can see the truth. Olive oil, while less harmful than other oils, is still harmful. Less bad is still bad.
Oil is pure fat. Is that something you lack in your diet? If not, then you don’t need it.
Plants have fat in them. They have it in the perfect ratio to the fiber and other constituents in the plant.
Eating oil without the plant from which it was extracted
is like swallowing the poison without also swallowing the antidote.
You can take the same course I did to improve your understanding of whole food, plant-based nutrition!
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