How To Boil Potatoes

I'm going to show you how to boil potatoes. I'm going to talk you through a few different ways of boiling potatoes. First of all, I've got some Maris Piper potatoes here.

This is kind of an all-purpose white potato. I've got some here; they're peeled and cut into pieces. I'm going to first show you how far you want to boil them if you're going to roast them - that's parboiling - then we're going to carry on cooking them until they're ready to mash.

I've also got some new potatoes here, which I would use in potato salad, something like that. I'm going to show you how to cook those as well. We're just going to leave these now, until they're up to a boil, and I'll show you parboil point.

Obviously, new potatoes come in different sizes; there's probably difference there. You can cut them down. These are roughly an okay size for chucking together.

If they get really different sizes then, obviously, chop some of the larger ones down. I've just got again here, some cold water, a good bit of salt, and I'm just going to pop the potatoes in. Basically, you need enough water to cover your potatoes, plus maybe a centimeter or two.

You don't want it too near the top because, as it boils, it might fall over, and get water all over your cooker. Bring it to a boil, you're looking at about 15-18 minutes to cook new potatoes. So, just test them with a small sharp knife.

It should go in easily, and if it's nice and soft, then they're ready to take out. Do check them on 15 minutes, because if you leave them for too long, and they're soft, they might be overdone. So, keep an eye on them.

I want to show you, this is the parboil stage now. I'm going to take one out and show you what you're looking for here. Now, as you can see, if I scrape it with my knife, the outside is cooked.

That means if you were to drain this pan of potatoes off and shake them around, you'd get a nice, fluffy outside to your potato. You can then roast them, and they'll be very lovely and crispy. The thing is, though, if we try to cut it, it's still a little bit firm in the middle.

So, they're parboiled, and if you want to make them into mashed, which I'm going to show you how to do as well, you need to leave them in another five minutes or so. That's how to parboil boiled potatoes. Basically, that's about five minutes after it starts to boil, they're ready because obviously they're cooking as the temperature is coming up, hits the boiling point, and then, in those last five minutes after it's boiling, that's when it's starting to cook on the outside.

It's probably going to take 10-15 minutes from boiling point to cook the potatoes for mashing. The potatoes are now ready for mashing. Just take that out, and put the knife in and give it a very gentle turn, and as you see, the potato's just broken apart; it's just crumbling.

There we go. They're now ready to mash, if you want to just do that with them. Our new potatoes are done now.

Put one onto a plate. The knife slides in and out very easily. Just cut it in half.

It's nice and soft, right through the middle. I'm going to turn this off and drain them. Those are now ready to do whatever you want with them, really.

I would probably turn them into a potato salad. You can just put some butter and herbs on them and serve them hot. That, along with the other potatoes I've already showed you how to do, concludes "How to Boil Potatoes".

That's how to do it. .