Potatoes Cooked Too Long: How to Save Your Dish

Overcooking potatoes can become mushy. As a rule, however, this is no reason to throw away the overcooked tubers. There are still ways to use potatoes differently than you might think.

Potatoes Overcooked: Make them mush

Potatoes tend to cook through when cooked. If the tubers stay in the boiling water for too long, they can overcook. This is possible because of the starch content in the potato.

• From 70 degrees Celsius, the starch dissolves and gelatinizes because it absorbs water. An overpressure is created in the potato, which causes it to disintegrate as it continues to boil.
• Especially with soft or floury potatoes, mashed potatoes can develop if the tubers are cooked for too long. The potatoes can then hardly be skewered on the fork. Waxy potatoes, on the other hand, contain less starch, which means they overcook less.
• If the potatoes have been in the saucepan for too long, you can easily make mashed potatoes from the overcooked potatoes. To do this, mash the potatoes and mix them with a little milk or cream, butter, and a pinch of nutmeg to a pulp.
• Alternatively, you can puree the potatoes with a little vegetable broth to make a soup and season with fresh parsley and fried bacon cubes. If the potatoes only fall apart halfway, you can make a delicious potato salad out of them – for example with pickles, radishes, and oil and vinegar.

Waxy or floury: choose the right type of potato

To avoid overcooked potatoes in the first place, you should pay attention to a few things when preparing them.

• The type of potato is particularly important. If you want to prepare boiled potatoes, fried potatoes, or jacket potatoes, you should always use waxy potatoes.
• Floury potatoes, on the other hand, are well suited for the preparation of mashed potatoes or creamy mashed potato soups.
• It is important that you always put potatoes in cold salted water and then heat them up. In this way, the tubers are cooked more gently.
• While the potatoes are cooking, it makes sense to test the firmness of the tubers several times with a fork. So you always have an overview of how long the potato still has to cook.