Boiled Potatoes
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Select potatoes of uniform size and wash them.
Peel the potatoes and drop them in cold water to prevent discoloration.
Soak the potatoes for 30 minutes in fall, or 1 to 2 hours in winter and spring.
Cook and serve
Cook the potatoes in boiling salted water until soft, checking with a skewer.
If the outside is soft but the center is underdone, add 1 pint of cold water to finish cooking without breaking the potatoes.
Drain the potatoes and keep them uncovered in a warm place until serving.
Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.
Explore the science
What each ingredient does
- Potatoes
- Starchy flesh that softens during boiling, forming the main body of the dish.
- Coarse sea salt
- Seasons the cooking water so the potatoes take up flavor as they boil.
The step that matters
Checking doneness with a skewer. Potatoes of uniform size can still cook unevenly, and an underdone center stays firm while the outside softens. Testing the center with a skewer shows whether the starch has fully gelatinized, so the potatoes are neither hard nor breaking apart.
“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.
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