To Boil Potatoes
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Wash and scrub the potatoes with a hard brush; do not use a knife.
Rinse them well in clean water.
Pack the potatoes tightly in a saucepan until it is about half filled.
Boil
Cover the potatoes with cold water.
Add 1 teaspoon of salt for every quart of water.
Bring the water to a boil.
Reduce heat and simmer until the potatoes are just tender, checking occasionally with a thin skewer.
Bring to a boil again.
Pour away all the water.
Dry and serve
Remove the lid and let the saucepan sit by the fire to allow moisture to evaporate.
Peel the potatoes quickly and serve.
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
- Provide the starchy body of the dish; their starch softens as they cook through.
- Coarse sea salt
- Seasons the potatoes as they cook in the water.
The step that matters
Checking tenderness with a thin skewer. Potatoes go from firm to mushy quickly near the end of cooking. Testing with a thin skewer, rather than waiting for a set time, shows when the starch has softened through the centre without overcooking the outside.
“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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