Yes, my mom always kept her cans of fat, my how cooking has changed in the 25 years since she’s been gone! But yes, that was probably her secret!

kland01s, try rubbing the potatoes with bacon fat before the initial cooking….those skins come out crispy AND flavorfull! Other yummy things you can add (as the men at the Kulis Air National Guard Base will attest to) to the filling are crispy fried bacon, scallions, chives and cheddar cheese. Copius amounts of butter are necessary as is heavy cream. Hey, this isn’t Jenny Craig, for heaven’s sake! [:p][}:)]

My mom made twice baked potatoes, bake the potato then cut off about a third of the potato lengthwise. She would let them cool, then scooped out all the white, mashed it with butter and garlic, stuff the skins and then bake them again until the top was a little crisp. These were heaven for me while growing up. After she died, I tried to make them, boy was that a lot of work and I just never could get the skins to stay nice and crisp like she did.

If there are any leftover little boiled "red" or "new" potatoes (not too frequent an occurrence what with the many delicious ways they can be eaten), then those leftovers are delicious sliced and pan fried, either by themselves or with some onion added.

Wally:
For home fries or any fried potato type dish, I do them the same way. After microwaving and spending the nite in the refrigerator, the potato undergoes a change. They are solid, but not brittle or flaky and extremely easy to cut. Definetly worth the time in the fridge.

When I have enough time, I usually bake my potatoes until the are 1/2 to 3/4 done. Then I take them out of the oven and let them cool and then put them in the fridge overnight. You can peel them if you wish or just slice them at random and then fry to the desired degree of browness.

A bit fussy perhaps, but darn good.

Wally

That’s the way I make fried potatoes-sort of. I microwave the potatoes first until fairly tender then fry them.

Yeah a lot of them do for breakfast. A great place I used to go for breakfast added onions & maybe a bit of spicy tomato mix to it, and there would be bacon and such in it. Grease like that slides right through me so it’s rare I go anymore but I recommend checking out different breakfast spots and see what they have for homefries.