Nuking potatoes instead of parboiling them makes skillet-sautéed potatoes even quicker to fix. Fresh herbs add a nice finish. Recipe below.
A FRIEND OF OURS—AN AMBITIOUS, ADVENTUROUS HOME COOK—does not own a microwave oven. He announces as much with the smug tone usually reserved for saying you don’t own a television.
I don’t get it. I mean, I understand when some chefs ban them from restaurant kitchens, refusing to use them to rewarm plated orders that sit too long because of bad timing on another order. They rightly expect their line to get the timing. But home kitchens are another story, I think. Our microwave sees regular use, from reheating leftovers to warming carryouts that have traveled too far to—increasingly—actually cooking.
Mark Bittman first got me thinking about cooking fresh foods with a microwave several years ago, when he was still writing his regular cooking column, The Minimalist, for the New York Times. In “You Use It Every Day. But Can You Make It Cook?” he sings the praises of artichokes, asparagus, eggplant, cauliflower and other vegetables nuked briefly with a tiny bit of water. The colors are brighter, the flavors fresher and the vitamins more in tact.
Bittman also mentioned microwaving potatoes instead of parboiling them before frying them. This was brilliant. We occasionally like skillet potatoes, seasoned with salt and pepper, browned in a hot skillet and seasoned with fresh herbs. But parboiling them takes time, occupies a a burner and dirties another pot.
Microwaving the potatoes is much faster than parboiling. We’re talking maybe three minutes. And after a quick sauté, the finished potatoes are tender inside, crispy and brown outside.
The recipe below is as much a technique as it is an actual blueprint. Feel free to experiment with various fresh herbs (or some dried herbs, for that matter—see the Kitchen Notes). Swap fingerlings or even sweet potatoes for the Yukon Gold I used (with sweet potatoes, I would peel them).
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Quick Skillet Potatoes with Herbs
Microwaving potatoes instead of parboiling them makes skillet-sautéed potatoes even quicker to fix.
Servings 2can easily be scaled up
Ingredients
2medium Yukon Gold potatoes, about 12 ounces
3tablespoonsolive oil, divided
salt and freshly ground black pepper
1-1/2tablespoonschopped fresh herbs(I used chervil)
Instructions
Scrub potatoes, but don’t peel them (or do peel them, if you wish). Cut into chunky, bite-sized pieces. Place in a microwave-safe dish, add 1 tablespoon of water, partially cover with a lid or waxed paper and microwave for 3 minutes.
Drain and let cool slightly—a few minutes will do. Place in a large bowl and blot dry with a paper towel. Drizzle 1 tablespoon of oil over the potatoes, season generously with salt and pepper and toss to coat potatoes. (The oil will help the seasonings stick to the potatoes and help the potatoes brown more evenly.)
Heat remaining 2 tablespoons of oil in a nonstick skillet large enough to hold potatoes in a single layer, over a medium flame. Give the pan plenty of time to get hot, then add the potatoes.
Cook, stirring occasionally, until potatoes are nicely browned and crisp on the outside, 7 to 9 minutes. Be careful to make sure all surfaces of the potatoes get a chance to brown. I used a pair of wooden spatulas to turn them individually, as needed.
Transfer cooked potatoes to a bowl with a slotted spoon and gently toss with fresh herbs. Adjust seasonings with salt and pepper, as needed, and serve.
Some thoughts on herbs. We just happened on the chervil and thought it sounded good. A member of the parsley family, this mild herb with undertones of anise is often used in French cuisine. Italian parsley is another good choice, as are fresh thyme, tarragon, oregano, dill or rosemary (add this to the pan halfway through cooking the potatoes). Each will of course add its own distinctive flavor.
For dried herbs, try tarragon, thyme or oregano. Use 1/3 to 1/2 as much as you would with fresh and add it when you put the potatoes in the pan. This will allow the dried herbs time to share their flavors and soften a little. I would not use dried rosemary—the needles will remain stubbornly stiff and crunchy.
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First, microwaves heat food very unevenly, so some parts of the potato might rapidly reach 205 degrees while others get to only 180 degrees. Second, rapidly heating a potato causes pressure to build and cell walls to burst, releasing starch molecules that glue together the broken cell walls.
Potatoes take about 5-6 minutes in the microwave for a 1000w microwave. We recommend cutting the potato in half lengthwise for quick, even cooking. For lower wattage microwaves, add 1-2 more minutes of cook time for a fully cooked potato.
For one thing, the microwave slightly dries out a potato, making it easier to crisp it up later. The other: it cooks a potato incredibly fast. The reason it works so well? Microwaves just happen to be great at heating up water molecules, and a potato consists of a lot of water.
Trapping the moisture in just steams the potatoes, but some people prefer it this way. Try this some time: Buy the loose potatoes, and wash and pierce them with a fork a few times to keep them from bursting. Wrap a paper towel loosely around each potato and microwave.
Because a microwave steams the inside of the potato rather than baking it from the outside, the resulting potato has a fluffier inner texture. The only downside of microwaving potatoes is that the skin gets soggy and doesn't have the crispy texture that you get from the oven.
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. It's both messy and a serious dinner let-down.
Potatoes often house Clostridium botulinum, the botulism bacteria. When they're cooked and not immediately stored in the fridge, spores of the bacteria can multiply. 6 Microwaving the potatoes won't kill the bacteria either, so your second-day potatoes could cause an upset stomach.
Give the potato a good scrub: Use a scrub brush to thoroughly clean the potato skin, and dry it with a paper towel. Poke holes in the potato: Using a fork or the tip of a knife, poke several small holes all over the potato before microwaving.
If you're microwaving multiple potatoes, just add a minute per side for each additional potato (i.e., start at five minutes on the first side for two potatoes and six on the first side for three). Try to keep them from touching on the plate; this will allow them to cook more evenly.
Eat the skin to capture all the russet potatoes nutrition. The potato skin has more nutrients than the interior of the potato. It has lots of fiber, about half of a medium potato's fiber is from the skin. Baked Idaho® Potato with salsa makes for a low calorie healthy lunch, try it!
The skin acts like a pressure vessel. If you don't let the steam escape, it builds up pressure—if it gets to a certain point of pressure from the water trying to become water vapor, it can pop the skin." Smith added that an explosion is more likely to happen in a microwave than in an oven.
Boil your cut potatoes in a pot of salted water for about 5 minutes, just until they begin to soften and become slightly translucent. Remove them from the water and let them air dry on paper towels.
Place the prepared potatoes in a microwave-safe dish and add enough water to cover them. Cover the dish with a microwave-safe lid or plastic wrap, leaving a small vent for steam to escape. Microwave the potatoes on high for 5-7 minutes, or until they are partially cooked but still firm.
Do I need to boil my potatoes first? Trust us: You seriously don't need to boil these spuds (or pre-cook them at all) before pan-frying. Slicing them thin allows them to cook through in the same amount of time that they need to get brown and crispy on the outside.
It takes about 20 minutes for the potatoes to be tender (which is about the same amount of time it would take for the water to come up to a boil and for the potatoes to cook in it, therefore there's no need to incorporate boiling into the process).
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