Free The Man Who Ate Everything by Jeffrey Steingarten

and three-quarters of an inch thick. Wash them under cold water to rinse off any free starch released when you cut open the cells in peeling and slicing.
    Cooking your potato. This is where we part company from all domestic mashed potatoes that have gone before us.
    Years ago the instant mashed potato industry found that if you precook potatoes in 163-degree water for twenty minutes (twice as long for waxy varieties) and cool them, the amount of free starch in the final mash will be reduced by half. Without this discovery the instant mashed potato industry would today be manufacturing laundry starch.
    I have experimented with both techniques and am guardedly optimistic that precooking may be the answer to our prayers. It appears to work like this. Cooking a potato is a two-stage process. The starch swells and gelatinizes within the cells when the potato reaches 160 degrees; then, nearer to the boiling point, the pectic c ement between the cells degrades, and the potato can be safely mashed. Precooking separates these steps. Cooling the potato slices after the starch has gelled causes a process called retrogradation to take place; the starch molecules bond to one another and lose much of their ability to dissolve again in water or milk, even if you later rupture the cells through ricing or mashing and even if you overdo the final cooling a bit. Retrogradation retards gumminess.
    For the first time anywhere industrial precooking and retrogradation can now be brought into the home kitchen. The use of a thermometer is vital. Put the peeled and washed slices into a pan of 175-degree water. Keeping the pan on a low flame and adding a little cold water now and then, you will find it easy to maintain the water within a few degrees of 160 for the next twenty or thirty minutes as you go about your other tasks. The slices will become tough and resilient and lose their translucent appearance. Drain the potatoes and transfer them to a bowl into which you run cold tap water until the slices feel cool to the touch, and leave them there for the next half hour. Then proceed to the final cooking, either simmering or steaming. Some recipes have you put your potatoes into cold salted water before bringing them to the boil. An elaborate Swedish study has shown that potatoes cooked this way produce a stickier final mash and sometimes develop an odd flavor. Other studies demonstrate that more vitamin C is lost if you start with cold water. Better drop your potato slices into actively boiling salted water and lower the heat to just above a simmer.
    Last night I tested four versions of mashed potato on my guests. The precooked version came in first. It was smooth, not gummy, and had a robust earthy potato taste. The runner-up had been boiled in salted water in the usual manner. It verged on the pasty but tasted good. The other candidates were hopeless.
    Mashing your potato. Mash immediately after you drain the potato slices. The goal here is to separate the cells without rupturing them, and the perfect temperature for achieving this is about 180 degrees Fahrenheit. As the potato cools to room temperature, the pectic cement hardens again, and many more cells break open when you mash them, spilling out their sticky starchy gel. At 50 degrees half the cells will rupture.
    Any cookbook that sanctions the use of a blender or food processor for mashing should be carefully shredded. People who like to use a hand masher because the resulting lumps remind them of their mothers’ cooking ignore the fact that this technique repeatedly abuses the already mashed portions of the potato while you seek out the solid pieces that remain. A ricer is best because each potato cell passes through it only once, and all the pressure is applied in a vertical direction. In contrast, a food mill shears more cells apart by scraping them across the screen as you turn the handle, but it is possible that our precooking technique will permit the use of a food mill without fear of