Sounds like an easy question, right? Maybe not so. Harvesting my abundance of potatoes, I decided to make mashed potatoes. Peering over my shoulder, my husband noted that I should be waiting until the water boils BEFORE placing my potatoes into the pot. I stopped to wonder. Was he right? I don’t happen to know the answer here and realized that I placed the potatoes into the water by habit, same way I boil eggs. But did he have a point?
He often does. I decided to research the topic and here’s what I found. According to the Farmer’s Almanac, the rule of thumb is as follows:
Vegetables that grow above ground (beans, peas, corn) – add to boiling water.
Vegetables that grow below ground (root vegetables, potatoes) – start off in cold water.
“The reason? Cooking aboveground vegetables simply requires softening the cell walls to make them more palatable and digestible. Because most green vegetables are small with thin cell walls, that process doesn’t take very long. So all you need to do is boil water, add the vegetables, and cook until they are just tender.
Root vegetables, on the other hand, contain a great deal of starch, and that starch needs to be dissolved before most can be eaten.
Starting potatoes off in cold water creates more even cooking. Throwing cold potatoes into boiling water gelatinizes the starches at the surface of the potato too fast, leaving you with a mushy exterior that falls apart and dissolves into the cooking water before the center cooks through. By starting in cold water, the temperature in the potato rises more gently.
While very few vegetables are “boiled” these days (thanks to clever chefs in the kitchen who come up with the best cooking methods to preserve flavor) it still “holds water” for corn and potatoes!”
Invariably, you will find folks that will swear they do the opposite and it works. (I’m usually one of them.) But still, I thought this interesting information. Take it for what you will!
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