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No peel, peeling potatoes


Aloha Steve

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Well, what do you guys think ? My Dad sent me this and he also sent the no peel, hard egg technique video.

edited for grammar & spelling. I do it 95% of my posts so I'll state it here. :)

"I have never developed indigestion from eating my words."-- Winston Churchill

Talk doesn't cook rice. ~ Chinese Proverb

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I suppose it depends on what you're trying to do, but I think Mary Ann's come up with a solution that doesn't really have a problem. You can wait 15 minutes to sort-of peel a partially cooked potato (and dirty two vessels), or you can take 45 seconds to peel an uncooked potato.

Dave Scantland
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Eat more chicken skin.

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I never boil whole potatoes -- they're too likely to start falling apart on the outside before the inside is done. And once you're cutting them up, her trick won't work.

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That was my exact thought after watching this cast away's video. Looks cool but why?

Are there recipes that need a large piece of potato skin ?

I have to agree, having just peeled a large one which took no time at all. Why use the power, ice cubes, bowls and the extra wait time ?

edited for grammar & spelling. I do it 95% of my posts so I'll state it here. :)

"I have never developed indigestion from eating my words."-- Winston Churchill

Talk doesn't cook rice. ~ Chinese Proverb

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Part of Heston Blumenthal's roast potato recipe is to leave the skins in with the spuds (in muslin) as they go through their first boiling, the idea being to impart even more potato flavour (tried it once; couldn't taste any difference ...). I hypothesise that maybe the same principle is intended here.

Certainly I use the boil/ice/peel method for tomatoes, where trying to get the skin off any other way is tedious, to say the least, but I really don't see much point for potatoes.

Leslie Craven, aka "lesliec"
Host, eG Forumslcraven@egstaff.org

After a good dinner one can forgive anybody, even one's own relatives ~ Oscar Wilde

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On the back of my 10 lb. bag of potatoes, it recommends boiling with the peels on to retain more nutrients. I've also heard that it makes the potatoes absorb less liquid. Sounds kinda iffy to me.

I'm with ya'll. Why complicate something so simple?

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For peeling three or four spuds, probably no big deal to use a hand peeler. But what if one was needing to peel 20 ?

Then make a round slit, putting in boiling water then cold then pushing skin off might make sense.

edited for grammar & spelling. I do it 95% of my posts so I'll state it here. :)

"I have never developed indigestion from eating my words."-- Winston Churchill

Talk doesn't cook rice. ~ Chinese Proverb

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I can peel a potato in literally 6-8 seconds...and you want me to boil it for 15 minutes just so I don't have to use a peeler?

Hey you guys in Brooklyn so everything fast :laugh:

edited for grammar & spelling. I do it 95% of my posts so I'll state it here. :)

"I have never developed indigestion from eating my words."-- Winston Churchill

Talk doesn't cook rice. ~ Chinese Proverb

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They've got to be kidding. What a waste of time and energy! How did those ice cubes materialize? From a good fairy? And why boil them in any case, since a microwave does a much better and faster job, and after one peels the spud with a peeler? Jeese!

Ray

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I guess it kind of begs the question: Is boiled then peeled different then peeled than boiled, nutrition/taste/texture wise? How does cut (in pieces, or just scored) affect it? If they aren't all equivalent, then her method may have merit.

Very pertinent question, I like the way you think my friend. I have no answers to these questions either. I'm tempted to try this method even with the extra effort just because the Alton Brown wants to see how it works; The heston in me wants to experiment; the Steingarten in me wants to taste test and compare :)

Will the potatoes retain more nutrients? Will the skins prevent flavor loss? Will the starches that make up the potatoes rupture or remain intact? So many questions! If only Harold McGee were here.... hahaha

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I could see myself doing this if I'm making potato salad or mashed potatoes, since I usually cook them in their skins anyways....

Would this work on thin-skinned potatoes too, like Yukon Gold? Or sweet potatoes?

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I keep hoping that someone who uses lots of potatoes on daily basis would chime in. I wonder how restaurants do it nowdays. I suppose they have potato peeling machine. One summer, when I was in HIgh School, which was hundreds of years ago, I worked at an upscale restaurant kitchen in San Francisco. They used to steam potatoes in some kind of a special oven and one of my daily jobs was to peel them. Peeling cooked potatoes was much faster than peeling raw potatoes, but you had to have asbestos fingers, because you had to do it while the potatoes were hot.

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I'm with the majority opinion on this...seems like a lot of trouble. However, if you're boiling the potatoes for mashed potatoes, it would be a simple matter to plunk them back down into the boiling water and let them finish. However, I rice mine, peel and all, and just fish the peel out of the ricer with a fork, after the potato has gone through. Works great.

Being the daughter of really elderly parents has put me in "dealing with life when I'm old" mode. I could see doing this if my arthrits gets bad enough that a peeler is painful to use. I could also see doing this if, for some reason, I'm temporarily one-handed -- such as post-carpal tunnel surgery, post-injury, etc. In that instance, the potato could be lifted from the ice water into a small bowl and peeled with just one hand. This is a good tip to tuck away in my brain (providing I can pull it out when I need it), but not something I'll use unless I have to.

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I can testify it works well for sweet potatos, which are more difficult to peel raw than are their white cousins. As for the difference in taste-texture -- I think there's a definite difference in cooking the peeled potato than the one in its skin. I see a marked difference when I make potato salad, when the boiled-in-skin potato do not partially disintegrate around the edges into the dressing when they're tossed together, still hot; that, to me, is the secret of great potato salad.

Beyond that, put me down with the side that thinks the Gilligan's Island method is more trouble than it's worth.

Don't ask. Eat it.

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I'm with the majority opinion on this...seems like a lot of trouble. However, if you're boiling the potatoes for mashed potatoes, it would be a simple matter to plunk them back down into the boiling water and let them finish. However, I rice mine, peel and all, and just fish the peel out of the ricer with a fork, after the potato has gone through. Works great.

Being the daughter of really elderly parents has put me in "dealing with life when I'm old" mode. I could see doing this if my arthrits gets bad enough that a peeler is painful to use. I could also see doing this if, for some reason, I'm temporarily one-handed -- such as post-carpal tunnel surgery, post-injury, etc. In that instance, the potato could be lifted from the ice water into a small bowl and peeled with just one hand. This is a good tip to tuck away in my brain (providing I can pull it out when I need it), but not something I'll use unless I have to.

So do you think that this method could be used to prepare a large amount of mashed potatoes if one doesn't have a potato ricer or food mill? Instead of pulling the partially cooked potatoes, removing the peel, and returning the potato to the boiling water, can't you just leave the potatoes to boil until done, then remove the peel? Just to be clear, I do have physical limitations which makes using such a method desirable.

Inside me there is a thin woman screaming to get out, but I can usually keep the Bitch quiet: with CHOCOLATE!!!

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Actually, I sorta do this for Thanksgiving mashed potatoes, except instead of the ice bath I spear the hot potatoes on a fork and peel off the peel with my other hand. For making a large quantity of mashed potatoes I find this much faster than peeling uncooked potatoes.

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