I never heard the term home fries until I grew up and encountered them in a restaurant, and I never encountered anything like them at home in the usual chunk style that you know. The only fried potatoes we had were called raw-fried and they were made with sliced potatoes. It never occurred to me that they were really a version of home fries until recently.

I was just wandering around the web the other day to see if anyone does anything different with home fries and ran across two sites that describe my mother’s raw-fried potatoes exactly:

Teri’s Kitchen actually calls them raw-fried potatoes and connects them to a Pennsylvania Dutch (Amish) concept. This page no longer exists.

Simply Recipes offers the sliced version as one of two ways to make home fries, with great images of how they look in the pan.

Give the sliced version a try, and remember to not move them until they are deeply browned on the bottom. If you are lucky, you will be able to flip them in one piece, but it doesn’t really matter. Sliding the whole piece onto a serving plate is a nice presentation, though.

I mostly make home fries now with chunks of potato instead of slices, but they still start out raw and are cooked the same way as the sliced, usually with the skins on.

Okay, I talked myself into it:

raw potatoes in oil and butter

covered for 10 minutes

flipped