Salt-Fried Potatoes

Stir-frying potatoes is hard mode!

Once again, I forgot to as TF to take a picture before he dished his dinner up.

I thought if I just kept them moving it'd be okay. I thought that being prepared to constantly stir and flip would be enough. I was wrong!

Those potatoes welded themselves to the bottom of that wok! Eventually I gave up and started adding water to try to deglaze it a little. Of course, this means that my potatoes ended up more boiled than fried by the end. But honestly, by that point, I just wanted to get them cooked and it didn't much matter how!

I also added the meat and veg to the wok too soon. I should've tested the potatoes for doneness, but my arm was already pretty tired from stirring them so much and they were sliced so thin... I figured they must be done by now! This means that by the time the veg was done, the potatoes were still a bit underdone. I turned the heat back on and cooked it up a bit more, but then all my stirring (and the addition of more water) caused my lovely thin potato slices to start breaking down. So the final product looks a lot messier than I'd hoped.

I think, for me at least, the answer may be to briefly deep fry the potatoes before adding them to the wok. I am just not good enough to stir-fry a potato. If your wok-fu is greater than mine, by all means, give this a try without the deep fry cheat!

Salt-Fried Potatoes
~700g very thinly sliced meat (I used lamb)
2 tsp. coarse sea salt
generous 2 tsp. cumin seeds, ground
dash white pepper
generous 2 Tbsp. Laoganma
2 Tbsp. dark soy sauce
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 Tbsp. minced ginger
4 potatoes, thinly sliced
4 green onions
2 bell peppers, any colour(s)
200g cremini mushrooms, sliced (optional)

1. Slice the meat as thin as possible. (Par-freezing helps here.)
2. Lightly boil the meat. (No more than a minute or so.) Drain; season with 1/4 tsp. salt, pepper, cumin, and anything else you'd like; and set aside.
3. Do all your other chopping, slicing, and mincing and make sure everything's ready to go.
4. Heat up the wok and add a bit of oil. Toss in the meat and stir-fry until it starts to brown.
5. Remove the meat from the wok and give the wok a rinse. Add the soy sauce and half the Laoganma to the meat and set aside.
5 1/2. Optionally, heat the wok back up, add a bit more oil, and stir-fry your mushrooms. Remove from wok and set aside.
6. If you're hardcore, this is the part where the potatoes get stir-fried. Heat up the wok and add a generous quantity of oil. Add the garlic and ginger followed by the potatoes and keep 'em moving!
If your wok-fu is weak like mine, cheat and deep fry your potatoes a little bit before adding them to the wok with the garlic and ginger. You're not looking for potato chip crisp here, but we do want them a bit browned with maybe a hint of crispiness on the outside.
7. Once you've achieved nice golden brown potatoes, add the rest of the Laoganma and the salt. Stir to distrubute.
8. Add the meat (and mushrooms) and stir to combine.
9. Add the green onions and bell peppers. Stir-fry until bell peppers achieve desired done-ness.
10. Serve with additional Laoganma if desired.