potatoes longer in firm, healthy conditions and discourages sprouting. Apple gives off ethylene

gas and alcohol while it breathes that suppress sprout formation.

Cooking potatoes is one of the first thing a new cook learns. Not much to it but keep in

mind a few points:

use just enough water to cover (to leach minimum of nutrients)

salt the water, otherwise you leach the natural salt from the potatoes and they taste flat

don't overcook or undercook, so keep testing with the point of a knife or skewer; cooking

time is around 15 minutes for diced potatoes but varies with your location and how large

the dices are. Average-size whole potatoes cook in about 30 minutes, large ones 45

minutes.

When baking potatoes, don't cover with aluminum foil unless you like soft skin. In foil

potatoes steam instead of bake. But oiling or greasing the skin before baking promotes browning

and crispy skin. Pricking the skin with a fork or knife before baking is also a good idea to

prevent a possible explosion in the oven that could happen if the potatoes have tough skin and

the built-up steam inside cannot escape. It makes quite a mess in the oven.

French frying is a messy operation even with a home deep-fryer but properly-made

French-fried potatoes are delicious. In deep-frying you reduce the high moisture content of

potatoes from the original 78 percent to about 2 percent. The moisture turns to steam in the hot

oil, desperately trying to escape while spattering oil everywhere, creating a mess. As bubbles of

steam burst when emerging from the surface of oil, they produce a small hissing sound. All the

bursting bubbles together act like an orchestra to create that pleasing sizzle with its anticipation

of that heavenly deep-fried taste.

The steam escapes first from the hottest part of the potatoes, the surface which is in direct

contact with the hot oil. Then, as the center part of potato gets hotter, moisture starts turning to

steam that escapes through the outside part. Eventually not much water remains in the potato and

the sizzling dies down. The outward pressure of escaping steam keeps the oil from seeping into

the potatoes, but the steam also cools their surface to prevent burning (evaporating water cools,

like your skin after coming out of the pool). When most of the moisture has boiled off, the

potatoes become vulnerable to burning but also start absorbing more oil.

Oil temperature is critical. If the oil is too hot, the surface of the potatoes burn before the

inside is properly cooked. If the oil is too cool, the escaping steam doesn’t have enough pressure

to keep excess oil out of the potatoes. The correct deep frying temperature is 375°F (192°C).

Unless you have a thermometer or a thermostat on your deep-fryer, there is no easy way to judge

that. Various home methods, such as browning a certain-size bread cube in so many seconds that

some cookbooks suggest, are not accurate enough when oil temperature should be preferably

within 15° of the ideal. For that reason the results of home French-frying is not often as

satisfying as French-fried products in a good fast-food joint.

The best method of deep-frying potatoes is the two-stage method. In the first stage you

cook the potatoes in oil at a lower temperature, 325°F (161°C), until they are limp but not brown,

about 3 to 4 minutes. In this stage the oil is hot enough to gelatinize starch, in other words, to

cook the potatoes. In the second stage the already cooked potatoes quickly brown at 375°F

(192°C).

Perfect French fries

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