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.
Give them a cold water bath: Once your potatoes are chopped, toss them into a large bowl. Then cover the potatoes completely with cold water and let them soak for at least 30 minutes (or up to overnight). This will help to rinse off the excess starch and help the potatoes crisp up beautifully in the oven.
Don't soak cut potatoes longer than overnight.
If keeping potatoes in water for more than an hour, refrigerate. However, don't soak them any longer than overnight—after that, the potatoes start to lose their structure and flavor.
Frying fresh-cut potatoes.
Soaking peeled, washed, and cut fries in cold water overnight removes excess potato starch, which prevents fries from sticking together and helps achieve maximum crispness.
The additional step of allowing the peeled, washed and cut potatoes to soak in cold water removes excess potato starch from the outside. This will help with the crisping up of the potatoes when they bake or roast. Soaking the potatoes in cold water also prevents the potatoes from browning too fast when cooking.
Why use salt water for soaking potatoes? There's moisture naturally found in potatoes, and moisture is drawn to higher concentrations of salt. (This is a process called osmosis.) So, if you put the potatoes in a salt water bath, that will help draw out some of their moisture, resulting in crispier fries.
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.
You can store peeled potatoes in water in the refrigerator for about 24 hours. Peeled potatoes left out by themselves at room temperature, on a refrigerator shelf or wrapped in foil or plastic wrap will still get dark overnight, so submerge them in a bowl of water, cover and refrigerate.
If you do – just soak them for 5 minutes and rinse. Doing so is a science thing – soaking cut potatoes removes excess potato starch. This means fluffy mashed potatoes (and not gluey!)
The way to get the most potassium out of the potatoes is to slice them one-eighth-inch thick, soak in a large pot of water for a minimum of 2 hours, dump the water, and cook the potatoes in a large quantity of fresh water. For people interested in keeping the most nutrients in their potatoes, bake them.
The best potatoes for French fries are soaked in a sugar solution before frying. The sugar solution has something to do with the carbohydrates and prevents the potatoes from soaking up a lot of grease, so they get crunchy.
The Mistake: Cutting Potatoes Into Too-Small Pieces
They'll absorb too much water during cooking, preventing them from soaking up all the yummy butter and cream when it comes time for mashing. The best-size chunks for boiling: about 1 1/2 inches.
Just be sure to store peeled potatoes in water for no more than 24 hours. After that, the cool refrigerator air will convert the starches in the potatoes to sugar, causing the flavor and texture of the spuds to change. Instead, just start cooking potatoes for a mash, potato salad, or hash browns.
The most important part here is that you use cold water instead of boiled – if you boil the water first, the outside will cook faster than the inside resulting in an uneven texture. Cubed spuds will take around 15 minutes where larger chunks or whole new potatoes will be 20-25 minutes.
For most potato dishes it's important to add the potatoes to cold water and allow the water to come to a boil with the potatoes in the water. The potato starch can react as soon as it comes in contact with hot water, which will promote uneven cooking and mealy potatoes.
Cold Water Soak
A quick rinse under cold water can wash away much of the surface starch. More starch is removed from a cut potato than a whole peeled potato, because a greater surface area is exposed on cut potatoes. Soak them in cold water for as long as a few hours to remove more starch than by rinsing alone.
If kept warm, gently mash in heavy cream until smooth and loose again, adding more if you'd like. If cold, heat the cream in a large pot until steaming, then add the potatoes. Gently mash and whip, adding more cream as needed, until heated through and fluffy.
Put the cut potatoes in a large pot.
Add salt to the water, if desired. Bring the water to a boil over high heat, then reduce heat to medium low.
Rinsing potatoes helps remove excess starch, so it is recommended to rinse the potatoes before cooking. To ensure even more starch is out of the way, it's recommended that they even be quickly rinsed after boiling. We recommend using hot water for rinsing after boiling and cold water prior to boiling.
Place the potatoes in salted water.
Try dunking your potato slices in salted water as the combination of water and salt keeps oxidation at bay. For every gallon of water, add about one teaspoon of salt to a large bowl or stockpot. Add the potatoes and then cover the bowl with plastic wrap.
You can prepare the spuds up to 24 hours before you need to cook with them. Then, on the evening you're planning to serve them, you can make creamy potatoes at the drop of the hat. Start by scrubbing potatoes under cool running water to remove dirt; dice, slice, or chop as directed in recipe.
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).
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. The cooks fry them twice, first blanching them until slightly limp in peanut oil heated to 325 degrees, and again in 375-degree oil to crisp and brown them.
Add enough cold water to cover the tops of the potatoes. Add ½ to 1 teaspoon salt to the water. Turn the burner on high and bring water to boiling.