We taste-tested eight brands of frozen hash brown patties you’re likely to find at your local supermarket. To find the very best one, we sampled each without knowing which brand was which. Our winner is Target’s house brand Market Pantry Frozen Crispy Hash Brown Potato Patties, but we also crowned three runners-up.
I’m a card-carrying member of the hash brown fan club. On road trips, I stop at breakfast drive-thrus to satisfy my morning cravings for hash browns—and specifically opt for the handheld kind. They’re reliably crisp and beautifully golden, and I can enjoy one with a squeeze of ketchup without a plate or fork. At home, when I have time, I prefer to grate fresh potatoes and fry up my own hash browns, but when I’m in a hurry, I never hesitate to reach for the frozen kind. The only question is: Which brand of patty-style hash browns is worth buying?
Serious Eats / Amanda Suarez
To find the best frozen hash brown patties, our editors taste-tested eight widely available brands. We opted for hash brown patties instead of shredded ones (though we look forward to testing shredded ones in the future). We cooked the hash brown patties according to the package directions, then sampled them in random order without knowing which was which. We then tabulated the results and crowned an overall winner, along with three other worthy contenders that we’d be happy to keep at home.
The Criteria
Great hash brown patties should be golden and crispy on the outside, with a pillowy interior that tastes unmistakably of potatoes. There should be distinct strands of grated potatoes; the spuds shouldn’t be a gummy, mushy paste. Salt is essential—the hash browns should be seasoned enough that you’d happily eat them on their own, without any ketchup or other condiments.
Serious Eats / Amanda Suarez
Overall Winner
Market Pantry Frozen Crispy Hash Brown Potato Patties
“The interior is so creamy, yet the exterior remains super crisp,” wrote our senior social media editor, Kelli. There was a pleasant hint of sweetness, and our editorial director, Daniel, appreciated that it tasted more natural than artificial. Both our associate visuals director, Amanda, and our associate editorial director, Megan, enjoyed its potato-forward notes. Meanwhile, I thought this hash brown had the best flavor and crispiest texture of all the contenders.
Runners-Up
Season’s Choice Hash Brown Patties
Everyone thought these hash browns were the crispiest of the bunch. “Beautifully crispy,” wrote Megan, who also enjoyed its strong potato flavor. “Perfect crunch,” wrote Amanda, though she wished there was a bit more salt. Like others, Daniel praised the exterior’s brittleness but found the patty a bit too thin and wished it had more potato filling.
Stop & Shop Hash Browns Shredded Potato Patties
“These taste like fast food, greasy hash brown goodness,” wrote Amanda, who called them her ideal version of hash browns. Daniel and I both noted their pleasantly starchy flavor; I also thought they were well-seasoned, although a bit oily. Megan found these hash browns slightly mushy, but enjoyed the flavor nonetheless.
Trader Joe’s Hash Browns
“Very crisp outside, very creamy inside,” wrote Daniel, who enjoyed the onion-and-potato flavor. Kelli found them perfectly crisp, but a touch oily. Similarly, Megan liked their external crunchiness but found them mushier inside than the rest. Meanwhile, Amanda thought they were passable but wanted more seasoning and salt.
Serious Eats / Amanda Suarez
The Contenders
- Cavendish Farms Potato Patties
- Market Pantry Frozen Crispy Hash Brown Potato Patties
- McCain Babycakes Mini Frozen Hash Browns
- Mydibel Hash Brown Patties
- Ore-Ida Crispy Hash Brown Patties
- Season’s Choice Hash Brown Patties
- Stop & Shop Hash Browns Shredded Potato Patties
- Trader Joe’s Hash Browns
Key Takeaways and Conclusion
Most frozen hash brown patties are made with the same four base ingredients: potatoes, vegetable oil, salt, and dextrose. Dextrose, a simple sugar derived from corn starch, promotes browning, helping the patties develop a golden exterior. Many brands also include sodium acid pyrophosphate, a stabilizer that prevents oxidation.
Vegetable oil is a generic term for a blend of plant-derived oils, most often soybean, but it can also include canola, cottonseed, sunflower, corn, or palm oil. Our winner, Market Pantry Frozen Crispy Hash Brown Potato Patties, uses canola, palm, soybean, and sunflower oils. The inclusion of palm oil, which contains more saturated fat than other vegetable oils, may enhance crispiness and give the patties a richer mouthfeel. Market Pantry’s hash brown patties are also made with dehydrated potatoes, which increases the ratio of solids to water and amplifies the potato flavor in the final product.
Like our winner, our runners-up—Stop & Shop, Trader Joe’s, and Season’s Choice—all have short ingredient lists, mostly limited to potatoes, oil, salt, dextrose, and sodium acid pyrophosphate. In our testing, hash browns with these ingredients consistently delivered high-scoring, crisp, flavorful hash browns.
Conversely, our least favorite options often include additional thickeners, such as modified starch, gums, and cellulose. These ingredients might account for the fact that these patties tasted less potato-forward and had a dense or mushy texture.
Our Testing Methodology
All taste tests are conducted with brands completely hidden and without discussion. Tasters taste samples in random order. For example, taster A may taste sample one first, while taster B will taste sample six first. This is to prevent palate fatigue from unfairly giving any one sample an advantage. Tasters are asked to fill out tasting sheets, ranking the samples according to various criteria. All data is tabulated, and results are calculated with no editorial input to provide the most impartial representation of actual results possible.
