Cooking potatoes is one of those kitchen activities that we perform almost automatically. We reach for a pot, pour water over them and put them on the stove without thinking about the details. Meanwhile, even small habits can make preparing dinner take longer than it should. Many people do not realize that they make mistakes that extend the cooking time of potatoes.
A common mistake made when cooking potatoes is salting them at the wrong time. Many people do this already at the stage of pouring cold water into the pot. Although this is not a critical mistake, a better solution would be to add salt only when the water starts to boil. Thanks to this, the salt dissolves faster and cooking is more efficient.
Adding it to cold water could slightly extend the moment it boils, which in practice means that potatoes start later . Although this is a seemingly minor difference, it can be important when preparing dinner every day.
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In addition, it is worth paying attention to several other details that are also important when cooking potatoes. One of them is to pour cold water over them before putting them on the stove.
This allows them to heat up evenly from the outside to the inside. However, if we throw them into boiling water, their outer layer will overcook and the inside will remain hard. As a result the whole thing needs to be cooked longer, a they may become watery on the surface and undercooked in the middle.
Let’s also remember that the amount of water in the pot is very important. Potatoes are often flooded well above their level, which means the water takes longer to heat up. So just pour them so that the water barely covers the potatoes, which will shorten the cooking time by up to a few minutes. It is equally important to match the size of the pot to the number of potatoes. It is also worth making sure that they are of a similar size or cut into equal pieces. It is such small changes that will make cooking potatoes take less time.
