Potatoes are one of the veggies that you can get in a rut with. Do you find that you're always mashing or baking them but not much else? There's the rut. There are several very simple ways to get out of the rut. You can try boiling, roasting and frying them to start.
First, make sure you leave the skins on and wash them very good. Then come the options.....
Boiling. You can use small potatoes whole or cut in half or a larger ones cut into chunks. Then boil them in HEAVILY salted water until tender. Drain and toss with butter. Quick, simple, and tasty.
Another new option is to boil whole red potatoes for about 10 minutes then slightly smash then in a casserole dish. Drizzle with olive oil and kosher salt, then bake in the over for another 20 minutes. YUM!
Roasting. Again you can use small potatoes whole or cut in half or larger ones cut into chunks. After you have washed them and cut them up, toss them in seasonings and oil. For the seasonings stir together garlic, salt, pepper, paprika, rosemary, thyme, basil, and/or oregano then stir in oil (olive oil or canola) until it makes a soupy paste type consistency.
Frying: You can pan fry or deep fry. Either way is good.
Deep Fry: The secret to making crispy home-made fries is double frying them. You can do homemade potato chips this way too. Just put them in for a couple of minutes. They will look greasy and limp but don't worry, they will come out great. Do all your potatoes then go back and put them back in the fryer a second time, cooking them until they are golden brown. They are so good this way. If you are doing chips it takes a lot of time since you need to put them in one by one. But I'm telling you now, it's worth it. And don't forget to salt them as soon as they come out of the fryer.
Pan Fry: The best way to slice the potatoes for pan frying them is with a meat sliced or a mandolin. If you don't have either, you want them thin and as evenly sliced as possible. I always fry bits of bacon in the pan first, then add some sliced onion before adding the potatoes. Some people say you can't get them good and crispy in a non-stick pan but they are wrong. If you have problems getting things to brown up in a non-stick pan, you are stirring it too much. Let the food sit a bit before stirring. You'll find that it will crisp up just fine it you do.
Here's another useful tip, use baking potatoes instead of buying a bag of small to medium potatoes. For my family of five, I use 3 large baker potatoes when making potato dishes such as mashed, fried, or potato salad. You only have to peel and cut 3 potatoes up instead of a zillion little ones that have a bunch of bad spots on them. You would be surprised but sometimes the cost is a lot less to go with the bakers too.
I recently found an amazing recipe from Boar's Head for Yukon Gold Potato Pave (check out the link for a picture) http://www.boarshead.com/recipe.php?recipeID=160&from=category&fromID=9. It is OMG good! The cheese is kinda expensive ($10.99 a pound) but it's a hard cheese so once you grate it, it's more than you know. We got about a 3/4 pound block and had enough grated cheese to make about 3 batches.
Hope you all Enjoy!
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