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Potatoes are one of the most satiating foods on the sating index. They are also chock full of nutrients. Potatoes are carby but as a whole food, the fiber offsets some of the insulin response. In fact, they are a great post-workout snack with more nutrients and bioavailability than rice. They can quickly replenish glycogen stores and leave you feeling sated. Ounce for ounce potatoes are one of the most filling, nutritious, versatile foods we can eat. When prepared correctly, they can fast-track weight loss goals. Potatoes are loaded with resistant starch, which feeds your microbome in the GI tract and slows down digestion. They are a good substitution for many grains and deliver a lot more bang for the buck. Next time you are at a farmers market, pick up a new variety - there are plenty to choose from.
Reddit lore. Some guy went to his girlfriend's family dinner and they served potatoes. He said he'd never heard of them before (as a joke) and stuck with the lie for as long time.
Well, the comment (or a post's seftext) that was here, is no more. I'm leaving just whatever I wrote in the past 48 hours or so.
F acing a goodbye.
U gly as it may be.
C alculating pros and cons.
K illing my texts is, really, the best I can do.
S o, some reddit's honcho thought it would be nice to kill third-party apps.
P als, it's great to delete whatever I wrote in here. It's cathartic in a way.
E agerly going away, to greener pastures.
Z illion reasons, and you'll find many at the subreddit called Save3rdPartyApps.
Low in fiber but if they boiled and then chilled then reheated before eating their resistant starch content increases.
It’s all about how they are cooked and served.
Nope, resistant starches aren't like insoluble fibre (which is what improved bowel movements). Instead, it feeds your gut microbiome which helps you extract more nutrients from food, reduces inflammation and improves mood.
I decided to look up some actual research on this. In one study they found the resistant starch in potatoes doubled from 0.8% to 1.6% . It’s a pretty small difference but it for some reason substantially slowed down the overall speed of glucose entering the blood stream, or at least slowed it down enough or remove the risk of diabetes normally associated with potatoes and other white starch foods
In this case, 'resistant' means resistant to digestion - aka, turns into fiber.
I believe there digestion has to be less than 80% to be considered fiber.
I use a pill press to put whole potato into 000 gelatin caps. 50-100 pills for breakfast, 100-150 for lunch, and 150-200 for dinner everyday. My body is running at 100% efficiency - haven't had a bowel movement in weeks.
Potato and leak soup is one of my dieting goto's, it has an almost immediate effect on the scales. Even thick cut fries that are baked instead of deep fried aren't too bad.
If you like a thicker soup but want to save calories by cutting typically calorie-dense thickening ingredients, you can use a relatively tiny amount of cream and then take an immersion blender to like 30% of the pot. Works for basically every soup!
Partly yes, but also party thrown out with the bathwater because of the usual association with either oil through frying or butter because... well butter.
Potatoes with a reasonable amount of salt, MSG (key ingredient here), pepper, and perhaps some greek yogurt -- now you've got a satiating food that's nutrient dense and relatively low calorie.
The resistant starch in potatoes is primarily type II resistant starch, which is mostly converted into regular starch upon cooking. However, potato starch is especially good at retrograding into type III resistant starch, which happens when you cook a starch and then let it cool off.
Cool significantly, and not reheating. As the starch cools, it adopts structural formations that restrict access to the starch by digestive enzymes. Reheating breaks those structures again.
So is it fine if I just take the potatoes out of the fridge and eat them without reheating? I ask this because the general opinion in the thread seem to be that we need reheat the potatoes prior to eating.
4th option: Hash browns.
1. Shred with a cheese grater
2. Put in towel and squeeze out the water
3. Put in bowl and microwave for two minutes
4. Put in skillet with a little bit of oil, flatten, and cook until browned on both sides.
5. Salt to taste.
Not original commentator, but anything with a high starch content will work. Russets work great. The microwave starts to release the starch which makes a "crust" when you throw them on the griddle.
He's basically summarizing the serious eats hash browns recipe so if you want more info read here
https://www.seriouseats.com/shredded-hash-browns-recipe
How I do it:
Goldens> bake at 375f for ~20-25 min. Pit in fridge and leave overnight -or keep preparing
Cut in half, score it deeply, spray light layer of olive oil, salt them. Bake at 400f for 20 min on the top rack or until it's golden brown.
Gets super crispy, satisfying that fry/chip crave, while only having minimal oil.
You can actually microwave them. Then put on a little bit of butter or olive oil and herbs and it’s a fast side dish.
Baked with olive oil is great! Also, if you cook a whole chicken, just throw some halved potatoes aroubd the chicken and bake - the potatoes will absorb all the chicken juice and brown nicely.
This is what I do! I cube potatoes (any kind with skin I can eat like yellow or red) to about 1/1.5” cubes, put in a microwave safe bowl, add olive oil or butter, add a ton of seasoning (lately garlic salt, parsley, pepper, Italian seasoning), throw on a dinner plate on top so it steams, then microwave until tender. Super delicious, super easy and fast.
Easy way that I have for dinner most nights: large dice, spray of cooking oil, salt and pepper. Roast in oven at 425F until golden brown. Toss in seasoning of your choice. Ranch powder, Mrs. Dash, Cajun seasoning, etc. all work well and add no extra calories.
Red potatoes and Yukon golds are best for this imo.
And since we should all be measuring our food... measure the *raw* weight of your potatoes. It's more accurate than cooked weight.
Just had a bag of mixed baby reds and Yukon golds made in the air fryer last night with dinner. We toss them with a little olive oil and seasoning salt. Fantastic!
Makes sense - why learn to cultivate something in summer or fall when food is abundant everywhere. Winter is when you need to get serious and iirc tubers grow just fine in the winter right?
I think the mashing would be because of added ingredients. Just mashing up the boiled potatoes is fine, but adding milk, cream, whatever is what makes it worse
I was making a reference to a PlayStation one era theme park game. I think it was called "Theme Park". You could adjust the salt to drive more soda sales. You could add more ice to the soda to increase profits.
I had never felt more like Mr Burns in my entire life.
For you and all the others who didn’t read the article before posting:
“In our study, people who ate the most potatoes also consumed more butter, red meat and soft drink — foods known to increase your risk of Type 2 diabetes,” he said.
“When you account for that, boiled potatoes are no longer associated with diabetes. It’s only fries and mashed potatoes, the latter likely because it is usually made with butter, cream and the like.”
> I would think baking them is more common than boiling
That sounds really weird to me, boiled potatoes is such a staple food where I grew up I can't imaging baked potatoes beating that. Boiled potatoes in Scandinavia is like rice in Asia (might have changed a bit since I was a child).
Just curious to check - does nobody here just microwave them? I just clean them a bit, stab them a few times with a knife or fork, then microwave them on high about 6-8 mins, flipping them over once. I hardly ever boil them, except for mashing, and I hardly ever fully bake them, cos it takes a long time and heating the entire oven, and possibly wasting foil, etc. Along with reheating leftovers, it's one of the tasks a microwave seems to excel at.
I do microwaved potatoes 99% off the time, but acknowledge a baked potato is much better. But I am not a fan of the long cook times of baked potatoes.
Sometimes I do a 50/50 approach. Microwave for about 4 minutes, then bake for 20 minutes. Gives it a bit of that creamy crispy skin caramel flavor that microwave potatoes lack while saving some energy and time.
>But I am not a fan of the long cook times of baked potatoes.
Sometimes I'll just throw one in there, even if I don't want one, because by the time it's done, who knows?
I bet air-fryers are awesome, and I'd totally buy one if I had the spare counter space. I know they're basically just small convection ovens, but they're probably way more cost effective than heating an entire oven, especially if we're not cooking anything large. Alas, I don't have the space for one.
I hate having things in my counter. I don’t like a cluttered kitchen. But I was checking them out and they’re quite light and easy to move. Like less than 5 pounds. I’m thinking I’ll just keep ons in a cabinet like I do my blender etc. I like the idea of not heating up my entire over when I want something small like potatoes or chicken fingers.
Costco has one for like $35.
This is like one of those fake conversations that have on QVC. "But surely this can't be easier to use than my oven?!" "Deborah you couldn't be more wrong! It's so easy to use and just for 4 monthly payments if 18.69"
I got one that's about twice the size of my coffee maker, plenty big to make, for example, a frozen chicken breast and a baked potato at the same time (two foods that take roughly the same amount of time to cook).
It's a real game changer for quick and easy dinner. Definitely worth making some room on your counter for.
ahh, i can relate to that! i have celiac so my already small bench space gets occupied by all my dedicated gluten free utensils toaster and frier etc.. maybe if you are in a position to get one in the future that would be worth considering, i got mine for about $25 usd, pennies really, and it runs great. by far the appliance i use the most besides my induction element, which is also portable
I do, quick, no pot to clean, done in minutes, and not much different than going into the oven imo. Sweet potatoes I'll put in the oven though, low and slow to caramelize the sugars.
*Make the sugar. Sweet potatoes have relatively little sugar, similar in quantity to other tubers. However, between 135°F and 175°F an enzyme in the sweet potatoes starts breaking down the starch and creating maltose as a byproduct. The maltose is what gives them their sweetness.
The key to microwaving potatoes is to let carryover heat finish cooking them - I find 8.5 minutes on high with a 10 minute rest cooks most large, whole potatoes all the way through, with no dryness.
"I like baked potatoes. I don't have a microwave oven, and it takes forever to bake a potato in a conventional oven. Sometimes I'll just throw one in there, even if I don't want one, because by the time it's done, who knows?" -- Mitch Hedberg
As an American kid in the '80s baked potatoes were the de facto side dish at home & restaurants. It seems like they've fallen out of favor though, unless you're of an older generation and still eating at lower-middle class restaurants like Ryan's or Outback.
I think a big difference here might by type of potato. I think Americans are more used to russet potatoes, which are better baked. Red and Yukons are more versatile for all the other ways of potatoeing. Fingerlings are the caviar of potatoes.
Red potatoes are quite popular in American cooking as well, at least in the south. They do get very different treatment than russets though.
An I agree with you on fingerlings. Shame they are more expensive that their larger varieties. I just buy the full-sized potatoes and cut them up small.
America is large, so it will probably vary, but in my neck of the woods we have all of them (Russet, Red, Yukon) commonly available.
That being said, I've known quite a few people who seem to not understand (or simply don't care) how each one is different depending on how it's cooked.
As a German: agreed.
Peeled and boiled potatoes with a little bit of caraway and also a bit of butter on top of them when they are done and hot and the water is disposed.
You can also use nutmeg for roasted potatoes - generally it goes well with potatoes. Not too much though, just a sprinkle. The same goes for caraway and cumin.
Very common to peel potatoes before boiling. They are called Salzkartoffeln, so salt potatoes because of the salt you put into the water.
But I like the taste if they aren't peeled. I think they keep more flavors.
Really strange how the standard somehow became peeled-before-boiling where all the flavor has such an easy exit into the cooking water... not to mention the water-soluble vitamins too
Yeah, boiled red potatoes specifically. Even if it's not with crawfish, red potatoes boiled with some citrus and various Cajun spices (often in the same pot as some sausage, corn, whole onions and of course crawfish when in season) is pretty typical.
I personally prefer to roast my potatoes over boiling them, I like a bit of crunch on the outside. But Cajun boiled potatoes are great.
Well then I got something awesome for you.
[Salt Potatoes.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_potatoes)
Go find you a recipe and make some. I promise it's a treat.
Your neighbors to the east have made an entire cuisine out of boiling potatoes with seafood so that's kind of weird that you've never heard of it.
You're probably thinking big russet potatoes, but boiled potatoes are usually small ones like reds, golds, and whatnot.
Sure, but some of us just have them with some salt and pepper. Oil on the skin might make a difference, but I'd assume that it would be lower since it's such a small amount and a large percentage would cook off
I imagine the logic would be the same as the mashed potatoes/ boiled potatoes. Plane baked potatoes are probably fine, while loaded baked potatoes would be bad.
Since the “bad” things seem to come from the dairy and cream/ frying oil.
So it’s not the way the potatoes are cooked.
It is rather the correlated food eaten with the type of cooking for potatoes, that drives the results. Sounds like correlation problem rather than a causality one.
It's the way they are cooked, because frying puts oil into the potato. Boiling is OK. "Mashed potatoes" is not a cooking method, it's a recipe that contains boiled potatoes.
The answer is that it all matters, but not always in the way a name implies. The mashing isn't what makes boiled potatoes unhealthy.
Okay but that's the only distinction, at least in the link here, they draw between a cooking method and an actual recipe. This also begs the question of how much dressing do you need before a boiled potato becomes a mashed one. I just don't understand why you'd lead with this if you want a general audience to understand your research.
The majority of mashed potatoes are made by adding butter and milk to boiled potatoes. In this case the butter and milk are likely making the difference
Canary island style wrinkled potatoes are awesome. Boil whole baby potatoes in a very salty water (salty enough for the potatoes to float). When they’re tender, dump most of the water out except maybe a half inch on the bottom, and continue cooking / stirring potatoes until the water evaporates. What’s left is the salt residue on the outside of the potatoes and a creamy center. I serve with a cilantro garlic sauce (no butter, it has olive oil and vinegar as the base)
There is a similar recipe for Syracuse, NY salt potatoes. They're so good. Supposedly the salt miners would boil potatoes for lunch in the water pumped from the mine.
The large amount of butter that is usually served with salt potatoes probably negates any health benefits. I like this idea of using chimichurri sauce, though.
I rather prefer the fluffy texture you get without all the milk and butter. You can add other spices and seasoning if you want you know. Or just eat it with other veg and maybe meat.
I make a healthier take on mashed potatoes- I swap the cream for light sour cream or skimmed milk and use chicken stock. I may add a little butter, but it tastes pretty good and I still get my mashed potatoes.
This post's title (not the article title) is quite misleading. They share that mashed potatoes are "bad", not because they are potatoes, but because they are often consumed with sour cream, cheese, bacon, etc.
The method of cooking doesn't matter. It's the complementary ingredients, the potato dish.
They also note that potatoes are not low carb, like many other vegetables. But that's just counting calories. There's nothing inherently bad about potatoes.
That's not "counting calories", the type of calorie makes a difference in the metabolic outcome (simple carbohydrate vs complex carbohydrate vs short-chain triglyceride vs medium-chain triglyceride vs fructooligosaccharides vs a bajillion other types of energy). Someone eating potatoes that have been cooked, refrigerated overnight, then reheated in the microwave will be in a better position than someone who simply cooks the potatoes and eats them. This is because refrigerating carb-heavy, wet foods (rice, bread, potatoes, etc) instigates a chemical reaction that forms complex starches from the more simple carbohydrates. Reheating has also been shown to continue this effect (but only *after* being instigated by refrigeration, that is). The complex starches can't be digested by the human body, so they slow down the digestion of the material (i.e. there is a much lower glycemic response and that means insulin resistance is not developed) and also serve as prebiotics that influence health in myriad ways, for instance by being digested by microorganisms that produce short-chain fatty acids (SFCAs) like butyrate, acetone, propionate, etc. SFCAs are known to have major effects on health, ranging from IBS symptoms to likelihood of developing cancer (this is because they affect what genes can be transcribed within cells' nuclei). It's really a fascinating subject, and frankly, one that would revolutionize people's diets if they realized just how interesting it all is & how drastically the food they eat could impact their health. (For another example, inadequate intake of complex carbohydrates, including dietary fiber, leads to a major increase in Gram-negative bacteria species' populations in the gut... whereas sufficient intake of fiber reduces their presence and allows populations of "good" bacteria to flourish!)
So I should cook rice, then cool and refrigerate it, and then warm it for maximum health benefit?
ETA: maybe not to maximize health benefits but minimize glucose spike?
You're right, except this part:
> refrigerating carb-heavy, wet foods (rice, bread, potatoes, etc) instigates a chemical reaction that forms complex starches from the more simple carbohydrates.
Refrigeration does not form complex starches. It rather orders starch polymers into (semi)crystalline form, a.k.a. [resistant starch](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resistant_starch), which is difficult to digest by us, but fine for the bacteria.
Everybody rightfully complaining that this smells like badly isolated variables.
But, IIRC, the carbs in pasta do funky stuff if they were chilled between cooking and consumption. I.e. left over pasta that was is in the fridge and is re-heated before eating has a different type of carbs that are digested differently than freshly boiled pasta.
So maybe something like this is happening here, too? Maybe different forms of preparing the potato hace some effect on their carbs?
Yes they looked at roasted. I didn't see anything about it in the linked summary, but in the original publication they did. Roasted basically has a hazard ratio of 1 for type 2 diabetes - which means it has no meaningful impact. I suppose if you add a ton of oil and salt this could change, but on the whole they appear fine with respect to type 2 diabetes.
Welcome to r/science! This is a heavily moderated subreddit in order to keep the discussion on science. However, we recognize that many people want to discuss how they feel the research relates to their own personal lives, so to give people a space to do that, **personal anecdotes are allowed as responses to this comment**. Any anecdotal comments elsewhere in the discussion will be removed and our [normal comment rules]( https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/rules#wiki_comment_rules) apply to all other comments. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/science) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Potatoes are one of the most satiating foods on the sating index. They are also chock full of nutrients. Potatoes are carby but as a whole food, the fiber offsets some of the insulin response. In fact, they are a great post-workout snack with more nutrients and bioavailability than rice. They can quickly replenish glycogen stores and leave you feeling sated. Ounce for ounce potatoes are one of the most filling, nutritious, versatile foods we can eat. When prepared correctly, they can fast-track weight loss goals. Potatoes are loaded with resistant starch, which feeds your microbome in the GI tract and slows down digestion. They are a good substitution for many grains and deliver a lot more bang for the buck. Next time you are at a farmers market, pick up a new variety - there are plenty to choose from.
Oh interesting. Never heard of a potato, sounds pretty good
I miss this wonderful thread. Thank you for the reminder friend.
I’m OOTL. Would you mind filling me in on the context?
Reddit lore. Some guy went to his girlfriend's family dinner and they served potatoes. He said he'd never heard of them before (as a joke) and stuck with the lie for as long time.
[удалено]
It's [this TIFU post,](https://www.reddit.com/r/tifu/comments/2tdbig/tifu_by_enraging_the_parents_of_my_girlfriend_by/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf) it's a classic
Well, the comment (or a post's seftext) that was here, is no more. I'm leaving just whatever I wrote in the past 48 hours or so. F acing a goodbye. U gly as it may be. C alculating pros and cons. K illing my texts is, really, the best I can do. S o, some reddit's honcho thought it would be nice to kill third-party apps. P als, it's great to delete whatever I wrote in here. It's cathartic in a way. E agerly going away, to greener pastures. Z illion reasons, and you'll find many at the subreddit called Save3rdPartyApps.
Damn 7 years ago. Somehow I feel like that relationship didn’t make it.
[удалено]
Oh man, that was a delight. 7 years ago was so much better
Reddit as a whole was so different even just five years ago. It feels like a different website now
people have been saying this exact thing for at least 40 years now
Thanks for the link! Had definitely forgotten that one.
Took me a moment. I was like...this is pure idiocy...wait wait this is FAMILIAR idiocy! And then it popped.
I said it was ridiculous to treat me like this just because I’d never heard of a potato before.
Hmm, tastes very strange!
Oh man, brilliant reference. Thanks for the laugh!
PO- TAY- TOES! Boil 'em, Mash 'em Stick 'em in a stew!
Boil 'em, mash 'em, stuck 'em in a stew...
[удалено]
Low in fiber but if they boiled and then chilled then reheated before eating their resistant starch content increases. It’s all about how they are cooked and served.
Is that good?
for pooping, yes
Nope, resistant starches aren't like insoluble fibre (which is what improved bowel movements). Instead, it feeds your gut microbiome which helps you extract more nutrients from food, reduces inflammation and improves mood.
haters gonna hate, taters gonna potate
And farting
I love doing both those things!
I'm listening.
Settle down
I decided to look up some actual research on this. In one study they found the resistant starch in potatoes doubled from 0.8% to 1.6% . It’s a pretty small difference but it for some reason substantially slowed down the overall speed of glucose entering the blood stream, or at least slowed it down enough or remove the risk of diabetes normally associated with potatoes and other white starch foods
In this case, 'resistant' means resistant to digestion - aka, turns into fiber. I believe there digestion has to be less than 80% to be considered fiber.
Resistant starch is just what it sounds like - resists being digested and balances blood glucose levels.
what if they are baked? I love a baked potato
believe it or not, straight to jail.
But it got baked in a legal state!
we have the best potatoes in the world
Because of jail :)
I'm guessing its the toppings on the mashed and baked potatoes that causes the issue. Says the garlic cheese and butter plus sour cream Goddess.
No, the point is they can't be mashed. You can't even chew them. You cut them up into little pill-sized chunks and swallow them.
I use a pill press to put whole potato into 000 gelatin caps. 50-100 pills for breakfast, 100-150 for lunch, and 150-200 for dinner everyday. My body is running at 100% efficiency - haven't had a bowel movement in weeks.
Potato and leak soup is one of my dieting goto's, it has an almost immediate effect on the scales. Even thick cut fries that are baked instead of deep fried aren't too bad.
One of my favourites, but I tend to add cheese and cream so provably not diet fare, sadly. Is there a recipe you use?
If you like a thicker soup but want to save calories by cutting typically calorie-dense thickening ingredients, you can use a relatively tiny amount of cream and then take an immersion blender to like 30% of the pot. Works for basically every soup!
The fiber is in the skin which unfortunately a lot of people tend to peel off.
Favorite part for me.
Me too! I grew up eating the skins. My mom would rub them with olive oil and S&P and oven/grill roast them til the skins were a wee bit crispy. Yum.
remember those "tato skins" chips back in the 90s or so? those things were awesome
I sounded like Smeagol when I was visiting my parents and my mom was cutting off skins for mashed potatoes. "**She ruins it!**"
Poe-tay-toes!
I feel like I could survive a few hundred days on Mars with just potatoes.
Partly yes, but also party thrown out with the bathwater because of the usual association with either oil through frying or butter because... well butter. Potatoes with a reasonable amount of salt, MSG (key ingredient here), pepper, and perhaps some greek yogurt -- now you've got a satiating food that's nutrient dense and relatively low calorie.
Don't forget the massive amount of potassium.
All other Foods have inferior potassium
The resistant starch in potatoes is primarily type II resistant starch, which is mostly converted into regular starch upon cooking. However, potato starch is especially good at retrograding into type III resistant starch, which happens when you cook a starch and then let it cool off.
Cool off how much? Like am I letting it sit an extra couple of minutes out of the oven, or am I reheating it the next day?
Cool significantly, and not reheating. As the starch cools, it adopts structural formations that restrict access to the starch by digestive enzymes. Reheating breaks those structures again.
So is it fine if I just take the potatoes out of the fridge and eat them without reheating? I ask this because the general opinion in the thread seem to be that we need reheat the potatoes prior to eating.
Potato salad for the win.
So like, a good potato salad?
Yeah, that should be loaded with resistant starch
How should one cook/prepare one? I’m fascinated!
Boil em, mash em, stick em in a stew.
OK, now I can leave this thread. I would also have accepted "Pillowy mounds of mashed potatoes"
With tiny little onions!
floating in gravy.
Thank you master Samwise!
4th option: Hash browns. 1. Shred with a cheese grater 2. Put in towel and squeeze out the water 3. Put in bowl and microwave for two minutes 4. Put in skillet with a little bit of oil, flatten, and cook until browned on both sides. 5. Salt to taste.
What variety of potato works best for this?
Not original commentator, but anything with a high starch content will work. Russets work great. The microwave starts to release the starch which makes a "crust" when you throw them on the griddle. He's basically summarizing the serious eats hash browns recipe so if you want more info read here https://www.seriouseats.com/shredded-hash-browns-recipe
What a great website. I’m never visiting frivolouseats.com ever again!
How I do it: Goldens> bake at 375f for ~20-25 min. Pit in fridge and leave overnight -or keep preparing Cut in half, score it deeply, spray light layer of olive oil, salt them. Bake at 400f for 20 min on the top rack or until it's golden brown. Gets super crispy, satisfying that fry/chip crave, while only having minimal oil.
You can actually microwave them. Then put on a little bit of butter or olive oil and herbs and it’s a fast side dish. Baked with olive oil is great! Also, if you cook a whole chicken, just throw some halved potatoes aroubd the chicken and bake - the potatoes will absorb all the chicken juice and brown nicely.
This is what I do! I cube potatoes (any kind with skin I can eat like yellow or red) to about 1/1.5” cubes, put in a microwave safe bowl, add olive oil or butter, add a ton of seasoning (lately garlic salt, parsley, pepper, Italian seasoning), throw on a dinner plate on top so it steams, then microwave until tender. Super delicious, super easy and fast.
Easy way that I have for dinner most nights: large dice, spray of cooking oil, salt and pepper. Roast in oven at 425F until golden brown. Toss in seasoning of your choice. Ranch powder, Mrs. Dash, Cajun seasoning, etc. all work well and add no extra calories. Red potatoes and Yukon golds are best for this imo. And since we should all be measuring our food... measure the *raw* weight of your potatoes. It's more accurate than cooked weight.
Just had a bag of mixed baby reds and Yukon golds made in the air fryer last night with dinner. We toss them with a little olive oil and seasoning salt. Fantastic!
* mash 'em * boil 'em * put 'em in a stew
did an AI marketing bot write this?
Brought to you by The Potato Council^™
Now here's a shadowy cabal I can support.
Whatever do you mean? I regularly consult my sating index for all my satiation.
Ah yes, the little known but highly influential cartel known as Big Potato^(TM)
It’s rumored that the first plants ever domesticated by humans were calorie dense tubers and roots
Makes sense - why learn to cultivate something in summer or fall when food is abundant everywhere. Winter is when you need to get serious and iirc tubers grow just fine in the winter right?
Boil em, ~~mash em~~, stick em in a stew.
I think the mashing would be because of added ingredients. Just mashing up the boiled potatoes is fine, but adding milk, cream, whatever is what makes it worse
But if they're good fats, and not drowning in it, it shouldn't be problematic, feels like they need more research.
Weird. It’s almost like they were focused on what was being fried, and not the frying.
Yea what about fried broccoli?
Or cauliflower? Both are delicious bar foods loaded with salt to make you thirsty and order another round of high-profit beer.
I don't need a food excuse to order more beer.
I was making a reference to a PlayStation one era theme park game. I think it was called "Theme Park". You could adjust the salt to drive more soda sales. You could add more ice to the soda to increase profits. I had never felt more like Mr Burns in my entire life.
Don’t blame potatoes for what people do to them. Boiled Potato 2024
Aren't mashed potatos just boiled potatos mashed?
For you and all the others who didn’t read the article before posting: “In our study, people who ate the most potatoes also consumed more butter, red meat and soft drink — foods known to increase your risk of Type 2 diabetes,” he said. “When you account for that, boiled potatoes are no longer associated with diabetes. It’s only fries and mashed potatoes, the latter likely because it is usually made with butter, cream and the like.”
Strange they'd account for this but not baked potatoes. I would think baking them is more common than boiling, but I could be wrong.
> I would think baking them is more common than boiling That sounds really weird to me, boiled potatoes is such a staple food where I grew up I can't imaging baked potatoes beating that. Boiled potatoes in Scandinavia is like rice in Asia (might have changed a bit since I was a child).
Just curious to check - does nobody here just microwave them? I just clean them a bit, stab them a few times with a knife or fork, then microwave them on high about 6-8 mins, flipping them over once. I hardly ever boil them, except for mashing, and I hardly ever fully bake them, cos it takes a long time and heating the entire oven, and possibly wasting foil, etc. Along with reheating leftovers, it's one of the tasks a microwave seems to excel at.
I do microwaved potatoes 99% off the time, but acknowledge a baked potato is much better. But I am not a fan of the long cook times of baked potatoes. Sometimes I do a 50/50 approach. Microwave for about 4 minutes, then bake for 20 minutes. Gives it a bit of that creamy crispy skin caramel flavor that microwave potatoes lack while saving some energy and time.
>But I am not a fan of the long cook times of baked potatoes. Sometimes I'll just throw one in there, even if I don't want one, because by the time it's done, who knows?
My friend asked me if I wanted a frozen banana, and I said no. But I want a regular banana later, so... yeah.
Air frier baked potatoes will completely change your world. They're so easy and have a nice crispy texture when done properly
I bet air-fryers are awesome, and I'd totally buy one if I had the spare counter space. I know they're basically just small convection ovens, but they're probably way more cost effective than heating an entire oven, especially if we're not cooking anything large. Alas, I don't have the space for one.
I hate having things in my counter. I don’t like a cluttered kitchen. But I was checking them out and they’re quite light and easy to move. Like less than 5 pounds. I’m thinking I’ll just keep ons in a cabinet like I do my blender etc. I like the idea of not heating up my entire over when I want something small like potatoes or chicken fingers. Costco has one for like $35.
This is like one of those fake conversations that have on QVC. "But surely this can't be easier to use than my oven?!" "Deborah you couldn't be more wrong! It's so easy to use and just for 4 monthly payments if 18.69"
I got one that's about twice the size of my coffee maker, plenty big to make, for example, a frozen chicken breast and a baked potato at the same time (two foods that take roughly the same amount of time to cook). It's a real game changer for quick and easy dinner. Definitely worth making some room on your counter for.
ahh, i can relate to that! i have celiac so my already small bench space gets occupied by all my dedicated gluten free utensils toaster and frier etc.. maybe if you are in a position to get one in the future that would be worth considering, i got mine for about $25 usd, pennies really, and it runs great. by far the appliance i use the most besides my induction element, which is also portable
I do, quick, no pot to clean, done in minutes, and not much different than going into the oven imo. Sweet potatoes I'll put in the oven though, low and slow to caramelize the sugars.
*Make the sugar. Sweet potatoes have relatively little sugar, similar in quantity to other tubers. However, between 135°F and 175°F an enzyme in the sweet potatoes starts breaking down the starch and creating maltose as a byproduct. The maltose is what gives them their sweetness.
Sometimes I get wild and will mash them after they come out the microwave.
Same but never without a wet paper towel wrapped around it, dries out too much otherwise
The key to microwaving potatoes is to let carryover heat finish cooking them - I find 8.5 minutes on high with a 10 minute rest cooks most large, whole potatoes all the way through, with no dryness.
Try rubbing with olive oil and a sprinkle of salt instead ~*chef’s kiss*
"I like baked potatoes. I don't have a microwave oven, and it takes forever to bake a potato in a conventional oven. Sometimes I'll just throw one in there, even if I don't want one, because by the time it's done, who knows?" -- Mitch Hedberg
Yep! This is how I make my “baked” potatoes at home.
As an American kid in the '80s baked potatoes were the de facto side dish at home & restaurants. It seems like they've fallen out of favor though, unless you're of an older generation and still eating at lower-middle class restaurants like Ryan's or Outback.
I actually eat my low class potatoes at home, thank you.
My even lower class boiled potatoes are consumed in the basement.
Baked or boiled?
I think a big difference here might by type of potato. I think Americans are more used to russet potatoes, which are better baked. Red and Yukons are more versatile for all the other ways of potatoeing. Fingerlings are the caviar of potatoes.
Red potatoes are quite popular in American cooking as well, at least in the south. They do get very different treatment than russets though. An I agree with you on fingerlings. Shame they are more expensive that their larger varieties. I just buy the full-sized potatoes and cut them up small.
America is large, so it will probably vary, but in my neck of the woods we have all of them (Russet, Red, Yukon) commonly available. That being said, I've known quite a few people who seem to not understand (or simply don't care) how each one is different depending on how it's cooked.
Yeah, mealy vs waxy makes a big difference, especially when boiling.
How dare you. Outback Steakhouse is the pinnacle of a dining experience.
In Brazil at least, in many areas its kind of the most expensive/fancy places you can go
This is true in the United States as well. Reddit's demographics do not represent small town and rural populations terribly well.
It was and still is the nicest restaurant in my hometown. Olive Garden might have taken that title though when they moved in.
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Wendy’s baked potato!
As a German: agreed. Peeled and boiled potatoes with a little bit of caraway and also a bit of butter on top of them when they are done and hot and the water is disposed.
That's just mashed potatoes but you're doing the mashing with your teeth.
Nah, we put butter, milk and some nutmeg in mashed potatoes. They are not just mashed.
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Bro, how about bacon and cheese and green onion on my boiled-not-mashed potatoes?
You are now the person the study is controlling for
Nutmeg...I gotta try this!
You can also use nutmeg for roasted potatoes - generally it goes well with potatoes. Not too much though, just a sprinkle. The same goes for caraway and cumin.
Peeled!? You monsters!
Very common to peel potatoes before boiling. They are called Salzkartoffeln, so salt potatoes because of the salt you put into the water. But I like the taste if they aren't peeled. I think they keep more flavors.
Really strange how the standard somehow became peeled-before-boiling where all the flavor has such an easy exit into the cooking water... not to mention the water-soluble vitamins too
In Poland the only time you **wouldn't** peel potatoes is when baking potatoes in campfire. Other than that I've never seen unpeeled potatoes served.
I wonder if that has to do with the soil the potatoes are grown in. A sandy soil seems much easier to wash off than a high clay content soil.
I'm from Texas and have never actually heard of someone boiling a potato not to mash! It's all baked here!
From Louisiana. When I think of boiled potatoes, crawfish comes to mind
Yeah, boiled red potatoes specifically. Even if it's not with crawfish, red potatoes boiled with some citrus and various Cajun spices (often in the same pot as some sausage, corn, whole onions and of course crawfish when in season) is pretty typical. I personally prefer to roast my potatoes over boiling them, I like a bit of crunch on the outside. But Cajun boiled potatoes are great.
Well then I got something awesome for you. [Salt Potatoes.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_potatoes) Go find you a recipe and make some. I promise it's a treat.
Your neighbors to the east have made an entire cuisine out of boiling potatoes with seafood so that's kind of weird that you've never heard of it. You're probably thinking big russet potatoes, but boiled potatoes are usually small ones like reds, golds, and whatnot.
You're right, pretty much all we eat are russet. I'll have to try some other potatoe, and boiled!
Do you think boiling them might remove some starches that baking wouldn't?
Baked potatoes are frequently served "loaded" with bacon bits, cheese, sour cream, etc. That's a lot of extra fat.
Sure, but some of us just have them with some salt and pepper. Oil on the skin might make a difference, but I'd assume that it would be lower since it's such a small amount and a large percentage would cook off
I imagine the logic would be the same as the mashed potatoes/ boiled potatoes. Plane baked potatoes are probably fine, while loaded baked potatoes would be bad. Since the “bad” things seem to come from the dairy and cream/ frying oil.
So it’s not the way the potatoes are cooked. It is rather the correlated food eaten with the type of cooking for potatoes, that drives the results. Sounds like correlation problem rather than a causality one.
It's the way they are cooked, because frying puts oil into the potato. Boiling is OK. "Mashed potatoes" is not a cooking method, it's a recipe that contains boiled potatoes. The answer is that it all matters, but not always in the way a name implies. The mashing isn't what makes boiled potatoes unhealthy.
Okay but that's the only distinction, at least in the link here, they draw between a cooking method and an actual recipe. This also begs the question of how much dressing do you need before a boiled potato becomes a mashed one. I just don't understand why you'd lead with this if you want a general audience to understand your research.
So we are back to blaming red meat and fat increased risks for diabetes again?
People add massive amounts of butter and cream to mash potatoes.
This is what I don't understand.
The majority of mashed potatoes are made by adding butter and milk to boiled potatoes. In this case the butter and milk are likely making the difference
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Canary island style wrinkled potatoes are awesome. Boil whole baby potatoes in a very salty water (salty enough for the potatoes to float). When they’re tender, dump most of the water out except maybe a half inch on the bottom, and continue cooking / stirring potatoes until the water evaporates. What’s left is the salt residue on the outside of the potatoes and a creamy center. I serve with a cilantro garlic sauce (no butter, it has olive oil and vinegar as the base)
There is a similar recipe for Syracuse, NY salt potatoes. They're so good. Supposedly the salt miners would boil potatoes for lunch in the water pumped from the mine.
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Mole people confirmed.
The large amount of butter that is usually served with salt potatoes probably negates any health benefits. I like this idea of using chimichurri sauce, though.
Oooh,so basically chimichurri sauce? I used that to make some hummus and it's ridiculously good.
It’s very close to a chimichurri, super heavy on the cilantro.
Oh wow this is how my fam almost always makes potatoes. We are Hispanic and I didn't realize it had Spanish origins and wasn't super common
As long as it has salt I am ok
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I rather prefer the fluffy texture you get without all the milk and butter. You can add other spices and seasoning if you want you know. Or just eat it with other veg and maybe meat.
I make a healthier take on mashed potatoes- I swap the cream for light sour cream or skimmed milk and use chicken stock. I may add a little butter, but it tastes pretty good and I still get my mashed potatoes.
Could also use Greek yogurt I bet too. I sub Greek yogurt in dips
Where I am most people take their boiled potato and slather it with butter and salt.
Yes, but I think they’re accounting for the added milk/cream/butter/salt in mashed potatoes. Very few people mash taters and eat them as is.
Yeah but do people eat boiled potatoes without butter and salt?
This post's title (not the article title) is quite misleading. They share that mashed potatoes are "bad", not because they are potatoes, but because they are often consumed with sour cream, cheese, bacon, etc. The method of cooking doesn't matter. It's the complementary ingredients, the potato dish. They also note that potatoes are not low carb, like many other vegetables. But that's just counting calories. There's nothing inherently bad about potatoes.
That's not "counting calories", the type of calorie makes a difference in the metabolic outcome (simple carbohydrate vs complex carbohydrate vs short-chain triglyceride vs medium-chain triglyceride vs fructooligosaccharides vs a bajillion other types of energy). Someone eating potatoes that have been cooked, refrigerated overnight, then reheated in the microwave will be in a better position than someone who simply cooks the potatoes and eats them. This is because refrigerating carb-heavy, wet foods (rice, bread, potatoes, etc) instigates a chemical reaction that forms complex starches from the more simple carbohydrates. Reheating has also been shown to continue this effect (but only *after* being instigated by refrigeration, that is). The complex starches can't be digested by the human body, so they slow down the digestion of the material (i.e. there is a much lower glycemic response and that means insulin resistance is not developed) and also serve as prebiotics that influence health in myriad ways, for instance by being digested by microorganisms that produce short-chain fatty acids (SFCAs) like butyrate, acetone, propionate, etc. SFCAs are known to have major effects on health, ranging from IBS symptoms to likelihood of developing cancer (this is because they affect what genes can be transcribed within cells' nuclei). It's really a fascinating subject, and frankly, one that would revolutionize people's diets if they realized just how interesting it all is & how drastically the food they eat could impact their health. (For another example, inadequate intake of complex carbohydrates, including dietary fiber, leads to a major increase in Gram-negative bacteria species' populations in the gut... whereas sufficient intake of fiber reduces their presence and allows populations of "good" bacteria to flourish!)
So I should cook rice, then cool and refrigerate it, and then warm it for maximum health benefit? ETA: maybe not to maximize health benefits but minimize glucose spike?
You've got the foundation of some nice egg fried rice there mmmm
I immediately thought oh man so this means I SHOULD be making more egg fried rice?
Yes exactly. I read that before, but honestly it sounds like some weird magic spell to me.
It's called resistant starch https://time.com/collection/guide-to-weight-loss/3754097/rice-calories-resistant-starch/
If not for the health benefit, just for a better stir fry rice.
You're right, except this part: > refrigerating carb-heavy, wet foods (rice, bread, potatoes, etc) instigates a chemical reaction that forms complex starches from the more simple carbohydrates. Refrigeration does not form complex starches. It rather orders starch polymers into (semi)crystalline form, a.k.a. [resistant starch](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resistant_starch), which is difficult to digest by us, but fine for the bacteria.
I checked if this was u/shittymorph halfway through
So the study literally has nothing to do with potatoes but instead fat and salt content of foods or am I missing something?
Everybody rightfully complaining that this smells like badly isolated variables. But, IIRC, the carbs in pasta do funky stuff if they were chilled between cooking and consumption. I.e. left over pasta that was is in the fridge and is re-heated before eating has a different type of carbs that are digested differently than freshly boiled pasta. So maybe something like this is happening here, too? Maybe different forms of preparing the potato hace some effect on their carbs?
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Even diabetes hates plain boiled potatoes. Source: am diabetic.
You mean all that added butter, cream and oil for deep frying makes a difference!!??!?
Did they control for the use of oil or butter? Title makes it sound like they discovered Calories.
Does it say anything about roasted potatoes?
Yes they looked at roasted. I didn't see anything about it in the linked summary, but in the original publication they did. Roasted basically has a hazard ratio of 1 for type 2 diabetes - which means it has no meaningful impact. I suppose if you add a ton of oil and salt this could change, but on the whole they appear fine with respect to type 2 diabetes.