Potatoes

For those of you looking for that perfect crispy golden brown on the outside and soft and buttery on the inside potato, there are just a couple little tricks in the kitchen to make sure you achieve potato perfection every time.

Really, it’s all about the water. Potatoes have a lot of water in them, and most of the tricks to getting them crispy has to do with making sure you’ve sufficiently dried them and making sure they’re cooked through. Usually this is done by pre-boiling them. Although on lazy mornings when I want crispy hash browns, I just grate raw potatoes and press them in a flat layer between towels on my cutting board to remove the water. Works just fine!

In the frying pan, I tend to be of the belief that potatoes do not play well with others, if you’re aiming for that perfect crispy edge that is. There are plenty of delicious dishes that have soft potatoes in them that are the best thing in this world, but if you’re like me and the only thing keeping you from going out and buying a bunch of fried foods, then crispy is usually the goal.

Rather than pre-boiling, I cube my potatoes up nice and small, put them in a pan with a liberal amount of oil, and let them steam up a bit covered for the first bit of the cooking process. Then just remove the lid and toss around to brown all sides evenly, allowing excess moisture to cook off rather than puddle in the pan.

Also! Almost forgot—very important—when cooking with vegetables of just about any kind in the frying pan, wait to salt! until you’re at least half-way done cooking. Salt breaks down plant cell walls, making them burst and release their water. That’s not what ya want in the frying pan, that makes mush. What you want is the sear the edges of the potatoes up nice and crispy, not moisten and mush them up. Think French fries—you fry them in oil, and then you take them out and toss in salt.

When roasting in the oven, I do the same process, toss the potatoes in the pan with some oil and your seasonings, and cover with tin foil for the first part of the cooking process, then remove to crisp up.

To Peel or Not To Peel

Whether or not you have to peel your potatoes depends on a lot of factors, but mostly preference. For the most part, I am not a potato peeler, unless I feel like making a fancy smooth batch of mashed potatoes, but you can peel or not peel whatever you please. However, the skins are the only part of the plant in contact with the soil, so they’re highly nutritious. That being said, new potatoes that have been recently dug from the soil have super thing skins that should just be eaten, but lots of storage varieties or even just a crop that got hit with blemishes may lead one to want to peel their pots.

The great potato. This starchy root originates from South America where its center of origin throughout Chile and Peru are home to thousands of colorful wonky-shaped potato varieties. An essential staple crop wherever it goes, colonizers brought the potato back to Europe with them, where people became so dependent on them for survival that a single potato fungus was able to cause the Irish Potato Famine.

Although all potatoes originate in the Andes, the origin of diversity home to over 4,000 varieties, we tend to see just a few colors of fairly round potatoes in stores and at markets. But there is a gorgeous diversity of rumply lumpy splotchy multi-colored potatoes that have colorful surprises inside and out, and a variety of textures and flavors.