Potatoes – For the potatoes you can use sweet potatoes or white, red, or yellow potatoes or a combination. Some times I mix it up or instead of hash brown, I make home fries.
Cheese – Cheddar or Monterey Jack are best.
Roasted Green Chile – Any kind of roasted, peeled, and chopped fleshy chile works with hash browns. It you can’t handles spicy, use roasted bell of any colors. It’s hard to beat the combination of potatoes and peppers, so use you favorites of both.
Rinsing potatoes – High starch content potatoes, like Russets, can make hash browns gummy. So if you choose potatoes such as Russets or any large white, you might want to rinse with cold water after grating to remove some of the excess starch. Red potatoes, sweet potatoes, and new potatoes (any potato less than 2″ (~5 cm) in diameter) are relatively low in starch content, so I never bother to rinse those.
Non-vegetarian Option – Add bacon or Mexican chorizo to the hash browns.