Absolute best baked (what some people mistakenly call roast) potatoes I've ever had were in a small restaurant in Cornwall, England.
They were almost definitely locally grown, doubtless extremely fresh, and almost definitely an heirloom variety. (And I acknowledge that food always tastes better when you're on holiday.)
We were told the preparation was pretty simple: 'boil in a strong stock until almost fully cooked, then dry and coat in goose fat, and then bake until they look good'.
(Apart from being much faster than conventional baked potatoes, and much much faster & safer than this rosin preparation, there's little risk of getting sick from this method.)
> Absolute best baked (what some people mistakenly call roast) potatoes I've ever had were in a small restaurant in Cornwall, England.
> [...]
> We were told the preparation was pretty simple: 'boil in a strong stock until almost fully cooked, then dry and coat in goose fat, and then bake until they look good'.
You had roast potatoes.
I won't tell you how to make Buffalo wings or Chicago pizza.
In Britain, baked potatoes are oven-cooked whole, skin on, usually without fat; roast potatoes are peeled, cut into large uniform chunks (halved or quartered depending on the size), parboiled, then oven-cooked in lots of fat.
That's how my mother used to do it, but I've found that you don't actually need to use "lots of fat" -- you can get good results with much less (just enough oil or goose fat to cover the bottom of the roasting tray), provided you toss the potatoes in it (pre-heated) when putting them in, and turn them a few times during cooking.
The variety of potatoes used is also a critical factor.
We eat almost only almond potatoes. After eating those, there is nothing else that really cuts it any more. Every time we get back to Sweden and finaly can eat almond potatoes again, it's like "Oh, THIS is how it's supposed to taste". If you don't like potatoes, it's because you haven't had these. Just cook them carefully, they become mashed potatoes very easily. Serve as they are, with a piece of butter. I can eat only potatoes the whole week.
Yes, they can be hard to find in southern parts because they are harder to grow in warm climate.
You missed the important step after parboiling - you toss the potatoes in the pan used for parboiling, so that the outside gets slightly mashed around the edges; basically just give them all a single smack against the inside of the drained pan.
Btw I never knew a restaurant in Britain use locally grown heirloom varieties of anything without making a big deal about it. Although I suppose in American terms all produce grown in Britain is fairly local. Potato growing tends to be quite regional.
'New potatoes', the thin skinned spring type, usually eaten boiled with the skin on, come first from Jersey (Jersey Royals). Then Cornwall, but more commonly Pembrokeshire (just over the Bristol Channel from Cornwall). The thick skinned general purpose types come later from places with deep stone free soils. I think more of Lincolnshire, although they are grown in pockets all over. I like the ones from the localised sandy soils in mid Shropshire, but I grew up on them so I'm probably biased. Those are the ones I would roast.
It probably has to do with the boiling point of pine resin. There are probably other less noxious substances that boil in the 300c range that would produce similar results without the risk of fire or poisoning.
I suspect it's hardening around the skin of the potato (hence can't eat the skin) and essentially letting the potato steam itself?
Kind of like if you deep-fried it submerged in oil, but with even less ingress, and much less than boiling.
I commented this elsewhere and someone suggested sous vide ought to be very similar then, of course. (Added benefit perhaps: you can eat the skin!) Only difference might be that the rosin can get hotter, more like oil, than boiling water circa 100C.
I guess a similar effect of “steaming potato within its hardened skin” can be reached wrapping potatoes in aluminum and then putting them in a fireplace
I use rosin regularly as flux for soldering. Cooking a potato in it doesn't sound appetising, especially after the warning to not eat the skin, as the skin is not impermeable either.
That said, the Wikipedia page for rosin says it is "an FDA approved food additive".
Hmm. The state of California would probably argue that both the potatoes and the rosin has turned into cancer-generating zombie paste, at temperatures where using rosin for cooking makes sense.
It seems that the boiling point and flash point of rosin is quite high, somewhere close to 390 degrees Fahrenheit. So, transferring the heat directly into potato probably has some positive effect on cooking, but I would think cooking potatoes at that temperature in high temp cooking oil would produce a similar effect without toxicity. Giving up reusability seems like a good tradeoff.
Not "very long" no. The oil can be cleaned and reused a few times but even with light use a week is pushing it. Places that do a lot of frying are changing oil every other day, possibly even daily at like a fried chicken place.
Personally this cooking method in the link to me is disgusting. Ive settled on my favorite way to cook potatoes - microwave. They get the gentle cook of a boil without the water soluble nutrient loss. Sometimes I let them chill overnight in the fridge then give them a gentle reheat before eating to decrease glycemic load and increase resistant starch. This makes them a lot more filling to me. I eat the skin always.
The danger is part of the appeal. When somebody gives you a mushroom called "the sickener," which is apparently edible with an appropriate combination of brining, fermentation, soaking, rinsing, and boiling, it's a little hard to resist the temptation to prove everyone else wrong and turn it into a tasty treat.
I'm someone who loves doing weird culinary things, and has, in the past, gone to relatively extreme amounts of effort to make something at home rather than buying it (or at least...to try making it at home). I am probably in the top 1% or more of people willing to expend time and effort on weird food things.
And yet even for me, spending 1.5-2 hours to get 3 baked potatoes, which are supposedly just....really nicely baked potatoes?...seems like a lot.
I'm glad that there are people out there preserving weird old historical cooking methods, but I feel no compulsion at all to actually try this myself.
The article linked in another comment offers this by way of justification:
> "Because none of the potato’s flavor or aroma compounds can escape, you get the most intense potato flavor you’ve ever experienced,” Brock says. “And they’re steaming in their own water, which is why you get a totally unique texture."
The article says the potatoes bubble and eventually float to the top as water is released. So surely some other volatile compounds could be released too? Perhaps compounds cannot be dissolved in the rosin as they are in a pot water? But then why is it better than regular baking?
Sous vide would certainly trap everything, but then again, we want a potato that is ultimately dry on the outside.
What if instead of rosin we used something safer and more available, like a cooking oil? I bet deep fried potatoes would taste quite good! :-P
Been a long time since I've had one, but I still remember that it was the best potato I've ever had. Not sure why. Just really good. And you can't eat the skin.
It was a deep south thing in the US, but even within living memory not very common.
The article mentions pine forests of georgia and north carolina so it seems to be a SE coastal plains thing. Quite different history and culture from what people usually mean by deep south.
Where did you get that in the (excellent) article linked? I noticed that they mention sealing in the context of pitch and resin’s industrial applications, but I understood the article more to trace the rosin potato thing back to a trendy mid-century extrapolation from potatoes cooked in brewers’ pitch in German-influence regions of Ohio and the northeast… cook-and-eat-right-away throughout.
And I was surprised they served them at Cracker Barrel.
my bad, I actually got it from this youtube video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KFoB5OEtRA), was trying to the find the source for it, and that same article came up when I searched google for "rosin preserves potatoes"
I've spent time reading some old baking books and looking at recipes, thinking I would discover some amazing technique, ingredient, or recipe that would be a game changer. What I discovered was that baking 50 to 200 years ago was primitive and offers very little other than some interesting history. Modern baking ingredients, techniques, and equipment are at such a higher level that there is little usefulness found in these old publications.
I would imagine the same is true for cooking. Our ingredients, equipment (such as temperature control), and techniques are so much better than these old ways of doing things, they just can't compare when it comes to taste and quality. Cooking and baking are sciences that have come a long way and are remarkably better than they have ever been. There is no reason to cook with poisons or questionable practices just for nostalgia's sake.
I came to this same conclusion after reading Harold McGee's "On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen" as well. Prior to modern cooking science, it seems like a lot of recipes involved something akin to a religious ritual that accidentally did something beneficial to your food. Now that we understand what is happening, we can use modern techniques to get much better results.
It might have been that book that talked about untapped potential for better flavors by making certain sauces in a microwave oven. The basic theory (as I recall) was that the microwaves would selectively heat oil droplets suspended in a watery sauce, and this would better extract flavor compounds into the oil while not heating the overall sauce enough to damage flavors.
Well, now I’m curious if other things often called rosins can be used the same way. Would cannabis rosin extracted by the solventless method work? It’s edible so probably not dangerous to eat like turpentine rosin.
Can I make cannabis rosin potatoes for danksgiving?
I think you'd need industrial quantities for a recipe like this. Maybe you can infuse some animal fat (or vegetable oil) with the cannabis rosin, though, and roast the potatoes in it.
This is interesting history, but I am skeptical that this is safe to eat, or better than a regular potato. If people are interested in trying unusual potato cooking methods, I'd recommend making Syracuse Salt Potatoes instead- they are excellent and easy.
Well I agree that there are better alternatives. But is rosin really that toxic? It seems to cause problems if the fumes are inhaled, but I can't find evidence it is particularly dangerous to consume. Similar to lots of other tree resins, which are even used in traditional chewing gum.
I'm not sure about you, but "can't find evidence it is particularly dangerous" is not exactly the standard of evidence I want when deciding to consume something that isn't normally a food item.
I have a tub of oar lubricant, for rowing. I also cannot find any evidence that it would be dangerous to eat, but I'm not going to fry up my dinner in it. Oar lubricant is traditionally just tallow so maybe that's what this is- but since it wasn't ever intended as food, do they, e.g. make sure it isn't stored and processed with equipment containing high lead concentrations, etc.? Maybe this one company adds something special and toxic that makes it work better that they don't have to disclose because it's not for human consumption?
Yes, but is there already some niche folk history of cooking food in oar lubricant? My response was to you saying "I am skeptical that this is safe to eat" when people have been, apparently, safely eating it.
The LD50 is pretty high, so it's not likely to kill you, but I don't think you'd want to eat it. "May cause skin, eye, and respiratory tract irritation"
I guess that with a steaming hot potato the higher risk is to inhale rosin in the steam rather than to eat it. I would much rather use duck fat to roast potatoes.
I wonder if baking in fine sand or salt would have a similar effect with less risk. Or perhaps wrapping in aluminum foil before putting the potato in the rosin pot.
Water is a solvent, and unless pressurized, liquid water is limited to a maximum temperature of 100C. Many foods cook differently (one may even say better) at higher temperatures, or if parts don't get dissolved into the water. Not defending using a poisonous rosin instead, but just pointing out why we don't all just stew potatoes.
Absolute best baked (what some people mistakenly call roast) potatoes I've ever had were in a small restaurant in Cornwall, England.
They were almost definitely locally grown, doubtless extremely fresh, and almost definitely an heirloom variety. (And I acknowledge that food always tastes better when you're on holiday.)
We were told the preparation was pretty simple: 'boil in a strong stock until almost fully cooked, then dry and coat in goose fat, and then bake until they look good'.
(Apart from being much faster than conventional baked potatoes, and much much faster & safer than this rosin preparation, there's little risk of getting sick from this method.)
I don't think we are mistaken to call the potatoes we put in the roasting tin with our roasting meat for a classic Sunday roast....roast potatoes.
Baked potatoes are baked skin-on whole in the oven.
I don't think 'mistakenly' is the word you were looking for. Otherwise we can start on a 'who invented English anyway' thread of food naming.
+ crisps that some people mistakenly call chips
+ chips that some people mistakenly call fries
+ biscuits that some people mistakenly call cookies
Etc
"some people"
You are definitely describing roast potatoes
Most likely they were maris pipers (actually a post war invention), maybe king edwards
> Absolute best baked (what some people mistakenly call roast) potatoes I've ever had were in a small restaurant in Cornwall, England.
> [...]
> We were told the preparation was pretty simple: 'boil in a strong stock until almost fully cooked, then dry and coat in goose fat, and then bake until they look good'.
You had roast potatoes.
I won't tell you how to make Buffalo wings or Chicago pizza.
In Britain, baked potatoes are oven-cooked whole, skin on, usually without fat; roast potatoes are peeled, cut into large uniform chunks (halved or quartered depending on the size), parboiled, then oven-cooked in lots of fat.
That's how my mother used to do it, but I've found that you don't actually need to use "lots of fat" -- you can get good results with much less (just enough oil or goose fat to cover the bottom of the roasting tray), provided you toss the potatoes in it (pre-heated) when putting them in, and turn them a few times during cooking.
The variety of potatoes used is also a critical factor.
We toss the potatoes on the tray in just enough oil to lightly coat them. Don't boil them, just have them in the pre-heated oven for 30ish minutes.
I prefer mealy potatoes, typically almond potatoes[1], but others work fine too.
Add some herbs, salt and pepper while tossing. Super easy, hard to mess up and yum yum.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almond_potato
We eat almost only almond potatoes. After eating those, there is nothing else that really cuts it any more. Every time we get back to Sweden and finaly can eat almond potatoes again, it's like "Oh, THIS is how it's supposed to taste". If you don't like potatoes, it's because you haven't had these. Just cook them carefully, they become mashed potatoes very easily. Serve as they are, with a piece of butter. I can eat only potatoes the whole week.
Yes, they can be hard to find in southern parts because they are harder to grow in warm climate.
If you are American and have never had british style roasted Potatoes… oh boy are you in for a treat.
You missed the important step after parboiling - you toss the potatoes in the pan used for parboiling, so that the outside gets slightly mashed around the edges; basically just give them all a single smack against the inside of the drained pan.
Yep, that helps to get them golden and crispy while roasting.
Btw I never knew a restaurant in Britain use locally grown heirloom varieties of anything without making a big deal about it. Although I suppose in American terms all produce grown in Britain is fairly local. Potato growing tends to be quite regional.
'New potatoes', the thin skinned spring type, usually eaten boiled with the skin on, come first from Jersey (Jersey Royals). Then Cornwall, but more commonly Pembrokeshire (just over the Bristol Channel from Cornwall). The thick skinned general purpose types come later from places with deep stone free soils. I think more of Lincolnshire, although they are grown in pockets all over. I like the ones from the localised sandy soils in mid Shropshire, but I grew up on them so I'm probably biased. Those are the ones I would roast.
That's similar to Jamie Oliver's "famous" recipe. He also suggests chuffing up the outsides a bit before baking, to create a crispy outer layer.
J. Kenji Lopez-Alt does it similarly. Alkaline water and a roughing up before roasting.
That wasn't at The Rising Sun by any chance?
The small restaurant in Cornwall, must be yeah.
On the off chance that somebody reading this is planning a culinary tour of Cornwall, Salamander in Mevagissey is also a great spot.
Hmm nothing in this article explains the effect the rosin is supposed to have?
"This is the best way to cook potatoes. Everything about it is difficult and dangerous. You have to try it!"
It probably has to do with the boiling point of pine resin. There are probably other less noxious substances that boil in the 300c range that would produce similar results without the risk of fire or poisoning.
That frustrated me too.
I suspect it's hardening around the skin of the potato (hence can't eat the skin) and essentially letting the potato steam itself?
Kind of like if you deep-fried it submerged in oil, but with even less ingress, and much less than boiling.
I commented this elsewhere and someone suggested sous vide ought to be very similar then, of course. (Added benefit perhaps: you can eat the skin!) Only difference might be that the rosin can get hotter, more like oil, than boiling water circa 100C.
I guess a similar effect of “steaming potato within its hardened skin” can be reached wrapping potatoes in aluminum and then putting them in a fireplace
I can't find the reference but another article I read asserted the higher cooking temperature made a better texture of potato.
Yeah, got the same vibe from the article. Try cooking in this possibly noxious stuff, it's the best!
You need a dedicated setup to cook your potatoes and you can't even eat the skin. That for me is an instant disqualifier.
+1, I desperately want to know why I should try this.
It's basically just deep frying in an uncommon (and possibly not food-safe?) oil.
I use rosin regularly as flux for soldering. Cooking a potato in it doesn't sound appetising, especially after the warning to not eat the skin, as the skin is not impermeable either.
That said, the Wikipedia page for rosin says it is "an FDA approved food additive".
Hmm. The state of California would probably argue that both the potatoes and the rosin has turned into cancer-generating zombie paste, at temperatures where using rosin for cooking makes sense.
It seems that the boiling point and flash point of rosin is quite high, somewhere close to 390 degrees Fahrenheit. So, transferring the heat directly into potato probably has some positive effect on cooking, but I would think cooking potatoes at that temperature in high temp cooking oil would produce a similar effect without toxicity. Giving up reusability seems like a good tradeoff.
I doubt the rosin is more reusable than cooking oil. Restaurants often reuse the same fry oil for very long periods of time.
Not "very long" no. The oil can be cleaned and reused a few times but even with light use a week is pushing it. Places that do a lot of frying are changing oil every other day, possibly even daily at like a fried chicken place.
Personally this cooking method in the link to me is disgusting. Ive settled on my favorite way to cook potatoes - microwave. They get the gentle cook of a boil without the water soluble nutrient loss. Sometimes I let them chill overnight in the fridge then give them a gentle reheat before eating to decrease glycemic load and increase resistant starch. This makes them a lot more filling to me. I eat the skin always.
if you break the skin, you cannot eat that potato
Be careful out there
Yeah, like why would anyone want to revive toxic potatoes.
because it's a unique taste , a unique method, and a cultural significance for some people -- no one is forcing you to eat it.
Why would anyone eat fugu or collect wild mushrooms?
It's fun and interesting. That's why. Danger be damned.
The danger is part of the appeal. When somebody gives you a mushroom called "the sickener," which is apparently edible with an appropriate combination of brining, fermentation, soaking, rinsing, and boiling, it's a little hard to resist the temptation to prove everyone else wrong and turn it into a tasty treat.
Note that rosin is very flammable, but I guess so is cooking oil.
I'm someone who loves doing weird culinary things, and has, in the past, gone to relatively extreme amounts of effort to make something at home rather than buying it (or at least...to try making it at home). I am probably in the top 1% or more of people willing to expend time and effort on weird food things.
And yet even for me, spending 1.5-2 hours to get 3 baked potatoes, which are supposedly just....really nicely baked potatoes?...seems like a lot.
I'm glad that there are people out there preserving weird old historical cooking methods, but I feel no compulsion at all to actually try this myself.
The article linked in another comment offers this by way of justification:
> "Because none of the potato’s flavor or aroma compounds can escape, you get the most intense potato flavor you’ve ever experienced,” Brock says. “And they’re steaming in their own water, which is why you get a totally unique texture."
Any article that says "potato flavours" without specifying what kind of potatoes should be taken witha large grain of salt.
Try almond potatoes and you will eat nothing else.
Thank you. TFA does not seem to say why they are so good...
And yet the article clearly says that the rosin will bubble because odd water escaping. If water can escape why can’t the aroma compounds?
Could you shrinkwrap and sous-vide a potatoe for the same effect?
The article says the potatoes bubble and eventually float to the top as water is released. So surely some other volatile compounds could be released too? Perhaps compounds cannot be dissolved in the rosin as they are in a pot water? But then why is it better than regular baking?
Sous vide would certainly trap everything, but then again, we want a potato that is ultimately dry on the outside.
What if instead of rosin we used something safer and more available, like a cooking oil? I bet deep fried potatoes would taste quite good! :-P
Strikes me to be the case.
Been a long time since I've had one, but I still remember that it was the best potato I've ever had. Not sure why. Just really good. And you can't eat the skin.
It was a deep south thing in the US, but even within living memory not very common.
The article mentions pine forests of georgia and north carolina so it seems to be a SE coastal plains thing. Quite different history and culture from what people usually mean by deep south.
Same for me, although I'm probably in the top 20%, not top 1%.
For us in New England, I wish there were an easy way to see if the difference is worth the effort.
A truly exhaustive history lesson: https://bittersoutherner.com/feature/2022/the-elusive-roots-...
This was linked by Gemini, which happily chirped that rosin potatoes can be great!
TLDR: it seems to be a way to preserve the potatoes by sealing them
Where did you get that in the (excellent) article linked? I noticed that they mention sealing in the context of pitch and resin’s industrial applications, but I understood the article more to trace the rosin potato thing back to a trendy mid-century extrapolation from potatoes cooked in brewers’ pitch in German-influence regions of Ohio and the northeast… cook-and-eat-right-away throughout.
And I was surprised they served them at Cracker Barrel.
my bad, I actually got it from this youtube video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KFoB5OEtRA), was trying to the find the source for it, and that same article came up when I searched google for "rosin preserves potatoes"
I've spent time reading some old baking books and looking at recipes, thinking I would discover some amazing technique, ingredient, or recipe that would be a game changer. What I discovered was that baking 50 to 200 years ago was primitive and offers very little other than some interesting history. Modern baking ingredients, techniques, and equipment are at such a higher level that there is little usefulness found in these old publications.
I would imagine the same is true for cooking. Our ingredients, equipment (such as temperature control), and techniques are so much better than these old ways of doing things, they just can't compare when it comes to taste and quality. Cooking and baking are sciences that have come a long way and are remarkably better than they have ever been. There is no reason to cook with poisons or questionable practices just for nostalgia's sake.
I came to this same conclusion after reading Harold McGee's "On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen" as well. Prior to modern cooking science, it seems like a lot of recipes involved something akin to a religious ritual that accidentally did something beneficial to your food. Now that we understand what is happening, we can use modern techniques to get much better results.
It might have been that book that talked about untapped potential for better flavors by making certain sauces in a microwave oven. The basic theory (as I recall) was that the microwaves would selectively heat oil droplets suspended in a watery sauce, and this would better extract flavor compounds into the oil while not heating the overall sauce enough to damage flavors.
Well, now I’m curious if other things often called rosins can be used the same way. Would cannabis rosin extracted by the solventless method work? It’s edible so probably not dangerous to eat like turpentine rosin.
Can I make cannabis rosin potatoes for danksgiving?
I think you'd need industrial quantities for a recipe like this. Maybe you can infuse some animal fat (or vegetable oil) with the cannabis rosin, though, and roast the potatoes in it.
Shouldn't these be boiled potatoes and not baked? Would this taste much different from a potato cooked in oil but not deep fried (confit)?
This is interesting history, but I am skeptical that this is safe to eat, or better than a regular potato. If people are interested in trying unusual potato cooking methods, I'd recommend making Syracuse Salt Potatoes instead- they are excellent and easy.
Well I agree that there are better alternatives. But is rosin really that toxic? It seems to cause problems if the fumes are inhaled, but I can't find evidence it is particularly dangerous to consume. Similar to lots of other tree resins, which are even used in traditional chewing gum.
I'm not sure about you, but "can't find evidence it is particularly dangerous" is not exactly the standard of evidence I want when deciding to consume something that isn't normally a food item.
I have a tub of oar lubricant, for rowing. I also cannot find any evidence that it would be dangerous to eat, but I'm not going to fry up my dinner in it. Oar lubricant is traditionally just tallow so maybe that's what this is- but since it wasn't ever intended as food, do they, e.g. make sure it isn't stored and processed with equipment containing high lead concentrations, etc.? Maybe this one company adds something special and toxic that makes it work better that they don't have to disclose because it's not for human consumption?
Yes, but is there already some niche folk history of cooking food in oar lubricant? My response was to you saying "I am skeptical that this is safe to eat" when people have been, apparently, safely eating it.
Here's a link to the MSDS
https://www.fishersci.com/store/msds?partNumber=AC419175000&...
> But is rosin really that toxic?
The LD50 is pretty high, so it's not likely to kill you, but I don't think you'd want to eat it. "May cause skin, eye, and respiratory tract irritation"
I guess that with a steaming hot potato the higher risk is to inhale rosin in the steam rather than to eat it. I would much rather use duck fat to roast potatoes.
No mention of alimentary tract irritation ;)
Turps is toxic if ingested, and it’s not clear if the rosin byproduct of turps production still contains some amount of turps.
I loathe the smell of turps, I wouldn’t eat anything that had any chance of coming into contact with it.
Fondant potatoes are my new jam.
I wonder if baking in fine sand or salt would have a similar effect with less risk. Or perhaps wrapping in aluminum foil before putting the potato in the rosin pot.
Well Hāngī potatoes are delicious and those are slow-roasted in a stone heated earth oven, so I expect sand or salt cooked would be really good.
This is so dumb, I can hardly believe that it is real. I would need to talk to someone who had experienced it firsthand to fully believe.
Water (stew) is... in every aspect possible a superior cooking medium.
How could this ever have been economical? How hard is it to make a cooking fire, or share a rosin melting fire with a cook pot?
I think it's essentially an old sarcastic joke, that people took too literally?
Water is a solvent, and unless pressurized, liquid water is limited to a maximum temperature of 100C. Many foods cook differently (one may even say better) at higher temperatures, or if parts don't get dissolved into the water. Not defending using a poisonous rosin instead, but just pointing out why we don't all just stew potatoes.
No, it's real, it's just three or four generations back in time. Fire was essential. Without fire the potatoes wouldn't cook.