When baking a baked potato in the oven how do you know when it's perfectly done?
Squeezing it doesn't seem to be that accurate for me. And using a fork seems pretty arbitrary. Any better ways?
How to know when a baked potato is done
potatoes
Related Solutions
Here is an excellent recipe by the guys over at Cooking Issues (and also a follow up report) with almost everything you'd ever want to know about chips. That first recipe is supposedly good even after they've cooled off:
Our standard fries are good even when cold.
Another option is to cook a lot of chips but stop after their first frying and freeze them; when you want to eat them, simply put the frozen chips into the fryer for the second frying. This also has added benefits:
Freezing acts like partial dehydration. When the frozen fries are finished, they liberate water freely, leading to rapid dehydration and good crust formation with a porous interior. Pre-frozen fries are crunchier than fresh and stay crisper longer after they are fried, but they tend toward hollow fry.
For Potato Jenga you are going to want to use a French Fry slicer like this one from Amazon. The larger slicing grate will produce potato of about the right square size. You will want to exclude the edges and end pieces.
Some additional tips: several hours to a day before you are going to serve them slice and blanch the potatoes in sweet water (boil water, add sugar, and potatoes boil for about 5 minutes, remove potatoes to and ice bath and store in the fridge.) Just before frying, dry the potatoes on paper towels to remove surface moisture. Once they are golden brown remove the fries to bowl and toss them with a light coat of olive oil.
[Edit added on 12/8/11]
- Crispy Pototoey Goodness: Success
- Jenga: FAIL
I love questions here that cause me to experiment with food. So after answering this question I decided to try this myself. Well, the potatoes came out nice and crispy and tasty, but I am afraid that @shujaa is correct, no matter how you cook them, you aren't going to get a good game of Jenga out of them...
You can get a good "Jenga Like Tower" this way, but you wont be able to play with your food...
Might I suggest carrot sticks sliced to the right size?
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Best Answer
If you want to go all engineer on your unsuspecting spuds, take their temperature with an instant read thermometer. According to several online sources I found, the ideal internal temp for your 'tater is 210F (99°C).