Mydibel Hash Brown Patties

I make no secret that I like hash browns. I think they pair beautifully with eggs and breakfast meats. Sometimes I will make over easy eggs and set them on a bed of shredded hash browns. Other times I’ll make hash browns as a side item to scrambled eggs and bacon. Another personal favorite is to replicate the fast food experience with a bacon, egg, and cheese breakfast sandwich alongside a simple hash brown patty.

Hash brown patties are commonplace at fast food restaurants like McDonald’s, and they’re equally common in grocers. In my experience, the undisputed kingpin of grocery store hash brown patties comes from Trader Joe’s, whose “Hashbrowns Shredded Potatoes” are as good as any fast food joint. Aldi also sells a pretty good hash brown patty.

However, at the time of this post, Aldi hash browns have been missing from stores. Instead, we’ve seen another brand take its place — Mydibel, which is not an Aldi house brand. We’ve seen this happen before: an Aldi branded product dries up, possibly because of supplier issues, and another outside brand takes its place. More often than not, the replacement is a temporary one.

Still, I like hash browns enough that I thought it was worth scoping these out, both on behalf of Aldi shoppers and for shoppers at other stores that carry these patties.

Mydibel Hash Brown Patties are an Aldi Regular Buy. That means you can find them in stores every day … at least, for as long as Aldi chooses to carry them. They can be found in the freezer section next to Aldi private label frozen starches, such as French fries and the like.

Mydibel is a Belgian-based company that specializes in manufacturing and distributing potato products, ranging from fries to hash browns. I looked around on its site, and I don’t see any indication of where the company sells its products outside of Aldi. Appropriately, the hash browns are a product of Belgium. Also appropriately, they come in a 1-kilogram bag — in American terms, that’s 2.2 pounds.

Right now, this bag costs $4.79. Given that a kilogram is roughly 35.27 ounces, the price comes out to about 13.6 cents an ounce. To my surprise, that’s higher than the ones at Trader Joe’s, which cost 10 cents an ounce.

Typical to a frozen starch food, these patties have some fat (6 g), saturated fat (2.5 g), sodium (210 mg) and plenty of carbs (14 g). The ingredients list is relatively short, with potatoes, palm oil, salt, dextrose, and Hydroxypropyl Methylcellulose, a food emulsifier that helps everything to combine together. The allergen note warns that these may contain trace elements of eggs, milk, or wheat.

Nutrition, ingredients, and instructions. (Click to enlarge.)

The package contains barebones cooking instructions for four appliances:

• Air fryer: 356 degrees Fahrenheit, 10-14 minutes
• Skillet: medium heat, 10-14 minutes
• Deep fryer: 347 degrees Fahrenheit, 3-3:30 minutes
• Oven: 410 degrees Fahrenheit, 15-18 minutes, turn halfway through cooking time

I’ve previously cooked hash browns — both Aldi and Trader Joe’s versions — in the air fryer for 14 minutes at 400 degrees, so I decided to bypass the printed instructions and do them that way. Mine came out crisp on the outside as desired; if you want something less crisp, the air fryer directions on the package, which call for a lower temperature than what I used, may be better.

We liked these. They’re crisp on the outside and have a seasoned potato flavor on the inside. They’re subtly different in flavor from either Aldi house brand hash browns or Trader Joe’s patties, and depending on your tastes you might like one over the other. But all in all, they’re similar enough that I think they’re fine as a substitute.

The Verdict:

Mydibel Hash Brown Patties are serviceable patties for your breakfast at home. They’re reasonably priced and the taste, while not exactly like a restaurant, is still pretty good. I think you can do a little better on both price and taste at Trader Joe’s, but if there’s no TJ’s near you these work well enough. I don’t know how long they’ll be at Aldi, though.