It’s lunchtime and I want some motherfucking potatoes, so I’m re-upping this piece Meg van Huygen wrote this past summer. I know going outside is dangerous right now, but if you’re already out… could you bring me some jojos? —Eds. Note
When I was in high school, after class, we’d go to this dark, dusty mini-mart next door that had spooky things like one whole chicken in a can and also a fryer case featuring jojos. They were like 50 cents a pound in 1994, and when you’re a teenager, you can inhale them endlessly, without a single synapse firing in between them, which is what we did. Get a two-pound bag and start crammin’. Steamed potato filling up your sinuses. That store’s long gone, but it had the greatest jojos I’ve tasted before or since.
If you’re new or something, jojos are those little tater wedges that are breaded, dusted with Lawry’s, and not deep-fried but PRESSURE-fried. The inside is light and fluffy like a baked potato; the outside’s crispy and slightly caramelized, with those thick, knurled ends. They’re orange. Potatoier than a french fry. They are not “home fries” or “breakfast potatoes,” and you may not make them in a skillet—that’s something else. Usually, they’re cooked in the same oil as fried chicken and are essentially chickeny themselves. Jojos are fried chicken’s little sister, basically, sharing its DNA and tagging along whenever they can.
You get them from a supermarket or mini-mart, ideally one inside a gas station, out of a foggy cellophane bag. Or in truck stops and roadhouses, maybe a shack on a rural highway with a sign that has the word “broasted” on it. That’s where your jojos are.
Someone recently tried to tell me that several places in the Midwest think they’re the birthplace of jojos, and I’d understood them to be a Northwestern thing. So I did some reading about it.
Let’s start where jojos did: with pressure fryers.
