For faster weeknight potatoes, use the microwave as a first step before roasting or sautéeing. To get potatoes onto your weeknight dinner plate faster, start by cooking them in the microwave.
Nuking potatoes instead of parboiling them makes skillet-sautéed potatoes even quicker to fix. Fresh herbs add a nice finish.
Wash and cube potato. Place in microwave and microwave for 4 minutes. Heat oil and butter over medium high heat. Add potatoes and fry until crispy.
Rinsing or soaking the potatoes for an hour (or, even better, overnight) will remove some of the starch from the surface and prevent the sugars from browning before the potatoes are cooked.
Here's how to do it: Just prick a few holes in a few potatoes with a fork, and microwave on high for 3-4 minutes, turning over once. There you go—super-fast par-cooked potatoes.
It's best to parboil the potatoes first before pan frying to get cooked tender inside. In my experience, not boiling the potatoes first will result in not well cooked inside but crispy outer potatoes. Unless you are cutting the potatoes extra thin (which makes it like potatoes crips) then it's best to boil first.
For any vegetable you would parboil or steam, the microwave works as well or better, and is faster. Put the vegetable in a bowl with a tiny bit of water (or sometimes none), cover and zap.
If your homemade fried potatoes are soggy rather than the crispy potatoes you crave, or raw rather than tender, or even burnt rather than golden brown you are probably doing (or not doing) one of the following: You're using the wrong oil. You're using very starchy potatoes and not soaking to remove some of the starch.
The soaking, Mr. Nasr said, is the secret to the crisp texture of the fries. It draws out the starch, making them more rigid and less likely to stick together.
Wonder no more! A potato's cell walls contain pectin, and these pectin chains remain stable when they come into contact with acids. This means that potatoes will remain hard if they are in a dish that has a lot of acid (for example, a dish you've added wine to). Salt is needed to dissolve these pectin chains.
Allow them to soak, 2 to 3 hours. (You can also stick them in the fridge and let them soak overnight.) When you're ready to make the fries, drain off the water and lay the potatoes on 2 baking sheets lined with paper towels. Blot with paper towels to dry them.
Refrigerating potatoes before cutting them into homemade French fry strips and frying is a big no-no.
Unless a battered fry, they are not adding in salt during the process. I recommend not salting the fries till they come out of the fryer and even then, waiting for an order before salting as the fries can turn limp prematurely if salted too soon.
Soaking the sliced potatoes is the fundamental first step of making proper french fries. The soaking process removes the troublesome starch on the outside of the potato, which will help the fries achieve the perfect crispness.
A microwave can cook a potato fast. Depending on the size and quantity of your potatoes, you can cook a whole potato within 6 minutes or so, from start to finish. Compare that to baking them in the oven, which can easily take an hour, or boiling them in hot water, often taking over 15 minutes.
Don't Forget to Poke
These little holes allow steam to escape while the potato is cooking. Forget to poke, and your potato could end up exploding in your microwave from the pent-up steam.
Soaking potatoes in water helps remove excess starch. Excess starch can inhibit the potatoes from cooking evenly as well as creating a gummy or sticky texture on the outside of your potatoes. Cold water is used because hot water would react with the starch activating it, making it harder to separate from the potatoes.
How long can peeled and cut potatoes sit in water before cooking, before they begin taking on too much water? A: We usually recommend no more than 24 hours. You can keep the potatoes from absorbing the water by making sure the water is not salted, and is chilled (you can even add ice to the water).
Soak the potato strips in water with a dash of apple cider vinegar. Soaking the potatoes draws starch to the exterior of the potato. This prevents fries from sticking together and helps them get crispy. Vinegar delays potatoes from turning brown and also speeds up the starch extraction.
Dry the potatoes: It is important to dry your potatoes before frying them to prevent spattering. Use a clean towel to pat them dry on a sheet pan or put them into a salad dryer to remove the excess moisture. If you store the potatoes uncovered in your cooler overnight, this will help to further dry them out.
Vegetables, such as potatoes, have more nutrients when fried in extra virgin olive oil then when boiled. The antioxidants and beneficial phenols in EVOO are transferred to the food.
Boiling your potatoes for a little bit before roasting helps make sure that you get that beautiful crisp crust on the outside. If you don't parboil your spuds, the outside skin will remain quite tough, meaning that whatever fat you use will not be able to get inside the cracks.
The FDA has received reports of serious skin burns or scalding injuries around people's hands and faces because of hot water erupting out of a cup after it had been over-heated in a microwave. Over-heating of water in a cup can result in superheated water (past its boiling temperature) without appearing to boil.