With this trick, you can peel potatoes super quickly
As a happy potato-eating people, you naturally don’t need us to tell you much about how to tackle a spud… But every now and then you come across a tip that you had vaguely stored away in a corner of your brain, and suddenly you realize: this is pretty brilliant!
Because if there’s one thing I don’t particularly enjoy, it’s peeling potatoes. It’s not exactly terrible either, but it is something I have to mentally prepare myself for a little, if only because of the time it takes. But from now on, this is how I’ll do it whenever potatoes need cooking.
Tackling a mountain of potatoes
A pound or so is easy enough to manage, but when lots of people are coming over for dinner, this is a super-fast way to peel spuds. First, scrub the potatoes (with a brush) to clean them up a bit. Call me crazy, but I have different-colored dish brushes for different purposes… A wooden brown one for the head of the espresso machine (because coffee = brown), a red one for ‘dirty’ purposes (red as in ‘off-limits for less dirty jobs’) and a green one for vegetable-related tasks.
Once you’re done tapping your forehead, we can continue: cook the potatoes until tender without peeling them, so in their skins. Once they’ve cooled down a little—enough that you can hold them (or use a tea towel to hold them if necessary)—take a small knife and either make a small incision or find a spot where the skin has already come loose. If all goes well, you can simply pull the rest of the skin off.
Win-win
The advantage? Besides saving time, the flavor is also considerably better! That earthy, almost nutty flavor of a perfect potato comes from the skin, and this method helps preserve it better. And if you then bring out the potato masher or ricer (for the perfect stamppot that you’re now making even more perfect); this method also gives you a much smaller chance of ending up with sticky, wet mash, resulting in light, fluffy mashed potatoes that you can use in all sorts of ways. Give it a try!
Also read:
- The secret ingredient for ultimate umami potatoes
- With these tips, you’ll make the tastiest baked potatoes
- Recipe: super-fast potato pancakes with cheese
