Boiled potatoes

Generality

Potatoes are tubers that MUST be cooked in order to gain edibility and digestibility.
Boiled potatoes are a dish characterized by a great ease of preparation and nutritional characteristics quite far from those of a simple "side dish".

Boiled potatoes do not have a very specific gastronomic association; since they can be served hot, lukewarm and at room temperature, their combination provides a very wide range of foods, even very different from each other. However, it is also appropriate to disambiguate the simple boiled potatoes from the more particular potato salad recipe. This is a subtlety which, on the other hand, can facilitate the understanding and the choice of one dish instead of another. While the "boiled potato proper" is considered a "pre-cooked ingredient" obtained by boiling the tuber in cold water, the "potato salad is a real recipe, therefore aimed at itself.
Let's try to clarify the concept by reporting one of the various recipes for potato salad.

Recipes: Potato Salad VS Boiled Potatoes

Ingredients for the potato salad: medium potatoes (150-200g l "one), fresh parsley (or rocket), light-fruity extra virgin olive oil and fine salt. At your discretion: fresh garlic and / or pepper and / or sweet paprika.
Procedure for the potato salad: Place the washed potatoes in a saucepan with plenty of insipid water; over high heat, bring the water to a boil and boil everything for 20 "per 100g of weight of the single potato (in this case 30-40"). Meanwhile, wash the parsley (or rocket) and chop it; if necessary, peel a clove of garlic, peel it and chop it finely (or leave it whole for pressing); add the extra virgin olive oil, salt to taste, parsley (or rocket) and possibly the optional ingredients. At the end of cooking (to be checked by piercing the tubers with a fork, which will have to pierce easily), drain and allow to cool. Once at a temperature that allows the handling of the boiled potatoes, peel them and let them cool completely; then, cut them to the desired size and season with the previously prepared mixture.

Ingredients for boiled potatoes: medium potatoes (150-200g l "one).
Procedure for boiled potatoes: Place the washed potatoes in a saucepan with plenty of insipid water; over high heat, bring the water to a boil and boil everything for about 35 "-45"; drain at the end of cooking (to be checked by piercing the tubers with a fork, which must be easily pierced).



Boiled Potatoes - All the Tricks to Boil Potatoes

Problems with playing the video? Reload the video from youtube.

• Go to the Video Page
• Go to the Video Recipes Section
• Watch the video on youtube

Boiled Potatoes: Pre-Cooked Ingredient

In the previous paragraph I defined boiled potatoes as a precooked ingredient; readers should not be surprised if this attribution is not attributable to any cooking or gastronomy manual, it is in fact a definition that I myself associate with those raw materials that NEED a thermal processing independent of the recipe in which they are used. Also in this case, to facilitate the understanding of this subtlety it is necessary to make a small example of the applicative difference between raw potatoes and boiled potatoes.
While raw potatoes are a basic product for the formulation of dishes that REQUIRE a "whole process starting from raw raw materials (for example," fish in potato crust ", where the tubers are cut into chips and lying raw on the skin of the animal to be baked), boiled potatoes represent a pre-cooked ingredient and useful for the preparation of recipes that require the tuber COMPLETELY and UNIFORMLY COOKED. This need arises, most of the time, in the case in which the other ingredients DO NOT require a heat treatment similar or superimposable to that of potatoes. A trivial example is the "classic mashed potatoes", which requires the preparation of boiled potatoes to be peeled and mashed before adding them to other ingredients (boil the potatoes in the milk would lead to the coagulation of proteins, longer processing times and a less pleasant final result).
Another example of a precooked ingredient are canned legumes; the only difference is that boiled potatoes have a short shelf life and are not high in sodium or other preservatives.
Boiled potatoes therefore represent both the basis for the formulation of the potato salad, and an extremely versatile ingredient from which to obtain QUICKLY: mashed potatoes, gnocchi, velvety, "quick" sauteed potatoes, etc. For a "skilled cook", keep in the refrigerator boiled potatoes represents a more than usual habit.

Boiled Potatoes are NOT "White Potatoes"

Bleached potatoes also represent a pre-processed form, but their cooking level is almost exclusively PARTIAL. Like boiling pre-cooked potatoes, blanching also has the function of adjusting cooking times; however, the blanching of the potatoes is applied in a diametrically opposite way to the boiling. First of all, boiled potatoes are products to be considered totally EDULI, while bleached potatoes are NO. The latter are minimally cooked and necessarily require further heat exposure; then, from a methodological point of view, the boiled potatoes are immersed in cold water whole and then left to boil, on the contrary, the bleached ones are peeled, peeled, cut and thrown into boiling water for a few minutes (i.e. until they tend to fade BUT do not change their consistency). A big difference!

Why are boiled potatoes cooked with the skin whole and unpeeled and in pieces?

In reality, you could also opt for this last method ... but the result would certainly not be the same! Cooking in whole and with the peel has the very important function of NOT letting the potato starch dilute, instead more dispersed. in cooking the tuber cut into pieces.

Quality and Nutrients