Chilling Facts About Potatoes

Chilling Facts About Potatoes Ingredients

Text only

Instructions for Chilling Facts About Potatoes

The Splendid Table, Tips for Vegetable Cookery Tips for Vegetable Cookery from Food Scientist Shirley Corriher A chef or caterer who has a busy day ahead may cut potatoes for French fries and place them in a large container of ice water in the walk-in overnight. The next day when these potatoes are fried, they get very dark and look done but are raw in the center. These potatoes fried perfectly the day before. What happened? When potatoes (or a number of starchy vegetables) stay chilled for a period of time, some of the starch breaks down into sugar. Now, these higher sugar content potatoes brown much faster. The sugar and protein content, along with the acidity, determine how fast a food will brown. If left at room temperature for a day or so, the sugars will join back together to form starch. If you have whole potatoes stored at a cool temperature, you may want to leave them at room temperature a day before frying. Cooks can use this little bit of science to make better low-fat oven fries. One of the problems with making fake French fries by roasting potato strips in the oven is that they get not so very brown. If you soak cut potatoes overnight in ice water in the refrigerator (maybe even add a little sugar), steam them a few minutes to partially cook, then toss them in something alkaline (less acidic) like slightly old egg whites, lightly beaten and sprinkled generously with herbs,cayenne, salt, pepper and a small amount of Parmesan, these potatoes will brown nicely in a hot oven. Be generous with the seasonings. Remember, one of the great problems with low-fat cookery is lack of flavor. Copyright 1994, Shirley O. Corriher Cooking teacher and food consultant Shirley Corriher has been lecturing and writing about food for over 20 years. She has made presentations to the Smithsonian Institution, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the International Association of Culinary Professionals, and, in Europe, at two International Symposiums on Gastronomy and Science. She lives in Atlanta. (c) Copyright 1998, Minnesota Public Radio. MM format by Manny Rothstein, 6/26/98. Posted to MM-Recipes Digest by "Rfm" on Sep 21, 98

Main Ingredient: PotatoCuisine: Uncategorized

More like this...

Food Fact Facts - Combination Group Part 1

Food Fact Facts - Combination Group Part 2

Food Fact Facts - Fruit-Vegetable Group

Food Fact Facts - Grain Group

Food Fact Facts - Meat Group

Ingredient Insight - look inside this recipe

Potatoes Tips Corriher Vegetables

for flavor and categorization

Recent searches:   orange roughy fillets   triple layer chocolate cheesecake   rise salad   t.g.i.   noodles szechuan   spinach pine nut   canned jalapenos   zoo chicken   eagle brand ice cream   inside round oven roast   cabbage carrot celery   baking squash   macaroni cheese spam   flour suger milk -egg   sour cream cake   shrimp drunken   babaganouj   low-   princess chicken   punch foam sea