Crispy Smashed Potatoes

Hey daddio! Here’s what you’ll find in this week’s newsletter -

• Your new favorite way to cook potatoes that turn out perfectly crispy every time

• The definitive answer on whether you should be salting your pasta water

• Simple, cheap, and delicious dinner ideas for when you’re in a pinch

But first…

Dad Joke of the Week

Tag us with your best dad jokes on Twitter or shoot us an email at [email protected] - we’ll feature our favorites here!

Family Recipe: Smashed Potatoes

Everybody loves a good potato - especially one crisped to perfection! Even better if you don’t need to smother it in oil to get that crisp. That’s exactly what you’ll get in this week’s recipe.

I was inspired to try making these potatoes after a friend told me about them. Turns out it was a great decision! They turned out great, and the preparation proved to be foolproof.

For really flavorful potatoes, be sure to add a healthy handful of salt to the pot of boiling water (see this week’s dinner dojo tip). You can also add chopped parsley to the potato cooking water.

There’s a lot of tolerance for overcooking with this one - it’s very forgiving. Always be careful with that broil function though!

Next time I try this recipe, I’d like to to use smaller potatoes to get more of that crispy skin.

Follow along with video and photos on Twitter, or keep reading below for the recipe:

Smashed Potatoes

Serves 4

8 medium sized potatoes

2 tablespoons butter

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 teaspoon salt

¼ teaspoon pepper

1. Bring pot of water to a boil (don’t forget to add salt!)

2. Scrub potatoes clean and add to boiling water with skins on

3. Boil potatoes for 20-25 minutes (or until you can pierce with a fork)

4. Preheat oven to 400F

5. Drain the potatoes and let them air dry for 5 minutes

6. Place potatoes on a tray and SMASH! Try to flatten the potatoes while keeping them intact. I used the bottom of a glass. Thinner = crispier

7. Let the potatoes air dry again for 5 minutes

8. Drizzle potatoes with melted butter, then olive oil. Sprinkle with salt and pepper

9. Bake potatoes for 45-60min, or until desired crispiness

10. Enjoy!

Dinner Dojo: Salt Your Pasta Water

Have you been salting your pasta water?

I asked nearly 40,000 people this question. Here’s what I learned:

(Spoiler alert: you should definitely be salting your pasta water)

Apparently people have a lot of strong opinions on this one. I heard from people that do it always, sometimes, and never. I heard from people that use a little, that use a lot. I heard from people that add olive oil to their pasta water!

So here’s the deal - you should definitely be adding salt to your pasta water. It gives your noodles a better texture and flavor. Period.

It can be interesting to understand why, though.

Water starts boiling at 212F. This makes it impossible for water to reach temperatures higher than 212F. Instead, it evaporates, and turns into steam.

Sodium chloride (ie salt) on the other hand has a boiling point of 2,575F! So when you add salt to your pot of water, it create a saline solution with a boiling point higher than 212F (ie the boiling point of water). So you get to cook your food with higher heat.

Higher heat helps you cook your food faster, and personally, I’ve found that I enjoy the texture of noodles cooked at higher temperatures.

Salting your pot of water also makes your noodles taste better - thanks to diffusion.

Salt likes to flow from areas of high concentration to low concentration. If you’ve got your noodles in a nice salty pot of water, then salt will diffuse from the water into the pasta throughout the cooking process.

This gives your noodles a rich salty flavor that can’t be achieved by salting at the table. It also contributes to the nice texture I mentioned earlier.

When salting your pasta, you want to use about a palmful of salt. Yes, you read that right - as much as you can grab with your hand.

In general, don’t worry about oversalting. It is possible, but unless you go really crazy, noodles will saturate before getting too salty. If you’re worried about sodium intake, remember that you’ll be dumping most of the salt down the drain when you rinse the noodles.

Like we shared in our newsletter about Cooking Without Recipes, you should aim for your pasta water to taste as salty as the sea!

I have no idea what all that olive oil nonsense is about though. Maybe I’ll have to look into that one more 🤷‍♂️ 

Shopping Cart: Mac N Cheese

You know what’s not controversial? Mac n’ cheese. Everybody loves mac n’ cheese - even the people that pretend they don’t.

This week, I topped a box of mac n’ cheese with leftover BBQ pulled pork (get the 3-ingredient pulled pork recipe here).

One of the lazier dinners I made all week, but BOY - was it good.

Here’s another one to try: one pound of ground beef, a bell pepper, and an onion. Chop the veggies, cook them in the same pan while you brown the beef, then pour the final product over a box of mac n’ cheese. Cheap, easy, delicious, hearty - tough combo to beat.

Don’t get me wrong - you probably shouldn’t be eating mac n’ cheese for dinner every night. But it offers a great starting point for an easy meal. Add some meat and veggies, and you’ve got a good, hearty meal!

Community Shoutout

A shoutout to my fellow dad chefing it up for his family - Dad.comm! I see this guy posting awesome food all the time, like homemade enchiladas and pineapple pizza. He’s got one lucky family!

But this shoutout isn’t even about Dad.comm’s food. It’s about showing up for his family every day, inside and outside the kitchen. After a week of cooking great food for his family every night, this man was up early on a Saturday keeping his house together too!

That’s it for this week! Don’t forget to subscribe for weekly updates right to your inbox:

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