Main ingredients
Potatoes recipes
Boil, mash, roast, fry, repeat.
Potatoes are not interchangeable and almost every disappointing potato dish is the wrong variety rather than the wrong method. The distinction is starch: floury varieties collapse and absorb, which makes them right for mash, baking and roasting; waxy ones hold their shape, which makes them right for salads, gratins and anything sliced. Using the wrong one is why a potato salad turns to mush and why roast potatoes come out waxy and pale. The recipes here name the type rather than only the weight, and where a variety is regional they say what to ask for instead.
25 recipes
Vinegret
Beetroot, potato, carrot and sauerkraut dressed with oil rather than mayonnaise, with the beetroot oiled first to hold the colour.
Ukha
Clear freshwater fish broth, never thickened and barely seasoned, so what you taste is the fish and the water it cooked in.
Sweetcorn Chowder
A thick corn soup that simmers the stripped cobs in the stock first, then blends only part of itself for body.
Rassolnik
Barley and pickled cucumber soup, sharpened at the end with the pickle brine itself rather than with vinegar.
Potato Gnocchi with Sage Butter
Baked potatoes riced while hot and bound with as little flour as they will take, which is the difference between light gnocchi and bullets.
Olivier Salad
Potato, egg, pea and pickle in mayonnaise, cut to an even dice and dressed only once everything is properly cold.
Okroshka
A cold soup of raw vegetables, ham and egg poured with sour kvass at the table, so nothing in the bowl goes soft.
Kissel
Fruit cooked with sugar and thickened with potato starch, served thin enough to drink or thick enough to eat with a spoon.
Gratin Dauphinois
Thin potato slices simmered in cream on the hob until their own starch thickens it, then baked slowly until set.
Crisp Hash Browns
Grated potato rinsed of its loose starch and wrung genuinely dry, then pressed into hot fat so it fries crisp instead of steaming.
Chicken Thigh and Potato Traybake
Bone-in thighs roasted on top of potatoes and lemon in one tin, so the skin crisps above the juices rather than poaching in them.
Zharkoye
Beef, potato and root vegetables braised slowly in one pot until the meat pulls apart under a fork.
Vareniki
Larger Ukrainian dumplings filled with potato and fried onion or with sweetened curd, boiled and dressed in butter.
Spanish Potato Tortilla
Potatoes and onion softened slowly in olive oil, then set with beaten egg in a small pan and turned out on a plate to finish.
Smoked Haddock Chowder
Undyed smoked haddock poached in milk, with that milk becoming the soup and floury potato doing the thickening in place of flour.
Shchi
Cabbage soup simmered in meat broth, made sour with sauerkraut in winter and with fresh cabbage in summer.
Patatas Bravas
Twice-cooked potatoes under a smoky, faintly fierce tomato sauce — the one tapa every bar in Spain is judged on.
Mushroom and Barley Soup
Dried mushrooms soaked and their soaking liquor used as the stock, with pearl barley cooked in it until the pot turns thick.
Malai Kofta
Potato and paneer dumplings fried until crisp, sitting in a mild cashew and tomato sauce enriched with cream.
Herring Under a Fur Coat
Layers of salted herring, onion, potato, carrot and beetroot under mayonnaise, left overnight so it sets firm enough to cut.
Crushed Roast Potatoes
Floury potatoes parboiled, crushed flat and roasted in hot fat, so the broken surfaces crisp into edges a whole roast potato never gets.
Crisp Roast Potatoes
Floury potatoes parboiled with bicarbonate of soda, roughed up in the pan, then roasted in fat that is already smoking hot.
Ceviche Clasico
Firm white fish, lime, chilli and onion, and a fifteen-minute window where it is exactly right. Buy the fish the day you make it.
Buttery Mashed Potato
Potatoes steam-dried in the pan and pushed through a ricer, then beaten with butter before the hot milk goes in.
Borscht
Beetroot and cabbage soup built on beef broth, with the grated beetroot added late and with acid so it stays red.