Potatoes are the easiest thing on the planet to cook. You can boil them, roast them, fry them, mash them, stick ’em in a stew. There’s over 100 ways to cook these amazing things. Here’s how to boil them.

Ingredients

Method

Step 1: Prepare them

Using the side of a knife crush the garlic clove. After crushing it, remove the skin and discard.

Wash the potatoes before you do anything with them. Peel the skin off using a potato peeler or knife. Then dice the potatoes to a size that you prefer. The smaller you cut it the faster it will cook, but you don’t want to cut them too small or they may disintegrate in the water.

Step 2: Boil them

Add the potatoes to a pan, as well as the crushed garlic, and some salt and pepper. Use white pepper if you have it, but black pepper also works.

Tip
You can also add some other herbs here to add a bit of flavour. Rosemary and thyme work well, and paprika can give it a bit of a twist.

Cover the potatoes in boiling water and leave on the heat until they are soft. Put a lid on the pan so the water doesn’t completely boil away. You can always add more water if it gets too low. Check on them every minute or so, moving them around so they don’t stick to the pan.

You can tell they are done by poking them with a fork. If the fork goes straight through then they are ready to eat. They should take around 5-10 minutes to cook.

Step 3: Serve them

Using a sieve, drain the water from the potatoes. Remove the crushed garlic, then place the potatoes on a plate and add butter. You may also find a little extra salt is needed here.

Tip
You can save the water to use for making gravy or soup later.

Serve them with pretty much anything you want – potatoes go with everything! Except pasta. Or rice. Or avocadoes. Or durian. Nothing goes with durian.

Now you have no excuse to not cook potatoes!