The right way to cook potatoes


The right way to cook potatoes
If you simply boil them (not steam them), or bake them in the oven, at some point you will have to ask yourself the question "are they well cooked?".
16 K 4.7/5 (19 reviews)
Grade this page:
Keywords for this post:PotatoesCookingTipsKnife
Last modified on: March 23th 2020
For this post: Comment Follow Ask me a question Send to a friend
The right way to cook potatoes
Your mum or dad may have taught you this when you were a child: You take a small sharp knife and try to get through the cooked potato, if you can do it easily, it's cooked. It always works of course, but it's a bit subjective, "easily" is not very easy to appreciate and then it depends on the variety of the potato, "Rattes" for example are much firmer than the "Belles de Fontenay".

cooking potaoes in water



Can you do any better than cutting through them with a knife?

Yes, and it's quite simple, let's imagine you want to make melting potatoes, and therefore be sure they are well cooked, then in that case, stick the famous knife in the potato, vertically, and lift the potato.
It comes with the knife? => undercooked, continue cooking
Does it fall off the knife by itself, or does the knife come out by itself? => they are cooked!

Are they cooked?



Obviously this only works with good sized potatoes, with grits or rattes it's wrong, the weight is too low for them to fall back...

In summary: To test the cooking of a potato, stick a knife vertically into it and lift it up, if the potato stays in place or falls back on its own after a few seconds, it is well cooked.

Lasts posts
Who's making the croissants?
Who's making the croissants?
When you look at a bakery from the outside, you naturally think that in the bakery, the bakers make the bread, and in the laboratory, the pastry chefs make the cakes. It's very often like that, with each of these professions having quite different ways of working, but sometimes there's also one...
November 23th 2025609
Oven height
Oven height
When we put a dish or cake in the oven, we naturally tend to put it on the middle shelf, and that's what we usually do. But in some cases, this position and height can be a little tricky, so let's find out why.
October 8th 20252,1285
The importance of sieving
The importance of sieving
In recipes that use a fine powder (flour, powdered sugar, etc.), you'll often see the advice to sift before using it. To sift is to pass the powder in question through a sieve (a very fine strainer) before incorporating it into your recipe. It's often advice, but is it really useful?
September 3rd 20257,1713
The grease spray
The grease spray
As soon as you have something in a recipe that sticks to the mold, the question always arises as to how difficult it is to remove from the mold. There's nothing more frustrating than breaking your cake when unmolding it, because part of it has stuck in the mold. The classic way to avoid this is...
August 26th 20256,6895
Cake moulds
Cake moulds
When we make a cake, or a cake of the same rectangular shape, we usually take out our usual mould and tell ourselves that the recipe is anyway "for a cake", but is it really that simple?
August 25th 20256,7285

Other pages you may also like
The bitterness of endives
The bitterness of endives
As I write these lines, we are entering the endive season, and if you like it, it's time to enjoy it, if possible with your local producers. Endive is good, but the reproach that is often made of it, and children in particular, is: "It's bitter! And it is (somewhat) true of course, endives...
February 9th 201914 K4.9
When should you salt?
When should you salt?
In the kitchen, we salt very frequently, almost all the time, and we must be careful because this salt can influence the texture of what you are cooking. I'm not going to talk about the amount of salt here, that's for another time, but rather about : When do you salt?
August 13th 201917 K4.5
The first breads of humanity?
The first breads of humanity?
I have already told you in a previous article the beautiful story of the croissants, but do you know what it is about the bread, who "invented" it, where and when? Well, you can imagine that recent discoveries, in 2018, have profoundly changed the history of bread.
February 16th 201914 K5
Maillard reactions
Maillard reactions
This subject cropped up recently in a discussion with my three charming nieces; do you know what Maillard reactions are? With a name like that, they could well be some principle in mechanics, but in fact the term applies to something much closer to all of us: it's what gives food more flavour...
January 28th 201538 K4
How to choose a centrifugal juicer
How to choose a centrifugal juicer
A centrifugal juicer is an appliance designed to extract juice from all kinds of fruit and vegetables. It will produce juice from tomatoes, carrots, apples, pineapple, blackcurrants, etc.
April 1st 201145 K4.4
Post a comment or question
Posted by:
I am not a leaving thing

Follow this page
If you are interested in this page, you can "follow" it, by entering your email address here. You will then receive a notification immediately each time the page is modified or a new comment is added. Please note that you will need to confirm this following.
I am not a leaving thing
Note: We'll never share your e-mail address with anyone else.
Alternatively: you can subscribe to the mailing list of cooling-ez.com , you will receive a e-mail for each new recipe published on the site.

Back to top of page