Every Way to Cook a Potato (63 Methods)

Hi, I'm Amiel Stanek, editor at large at Bon Appetit,

and this is Almost Every Way to Cook a Potato.

All right, today we're gonna cook a whole lot of potatoes.

There are hundreds of varieties of potatoes out there.

When we talk about potatoes,

the primary distinction we make

is between waxy potatoes and flowery potatoes,

and this is what we're gonna be working with today,

the good old fashioned russet potato.

It falls into the flowery camp, and it's super versatile.

You can get them everywhere, and we're gonna see

how many different ways we can cook it.

Raw potato, this is a russet like we talked about,

so it's flowery, high in starch, low in moisture

which means it's a really good storage potato.

As you can see, it's still got it's skin on it

which is thick and tough and kind of leathery.

When you remove that peel, the flesh is a nice, even white.

It's very, very firm to the touch, very dense.

We're gonna just try to eat it like an apple,

see what happens.

Oh my God, that is not good.

It's incredibly crunchy,

really kind of dirty tasting, really unpleasant.

I do not recommend.

Juiced potato, here we have a juicer,

we have a potato, we're gonna turn that juicer on

and make potato juice.

Wow, that is a tall glass of potato juice.

We're gonna give it a quick stir to incorporate it.

It's supposed to be really high in vitamin B, bottoms up.

Oh no, it's so dirty tasting.

I don't care how good this is for my hair and nails,

I do not wanna drink potato juice, this is gross.

Baked potato.

First things first, we're gonna take a fork

and we're just gonna create some little holes

for the steam to escape from.

Then we're gonna drizzle it with a little bit olive oil,

hit it with some salt and bake it directly

on an oven rack at 350 degrees for 60 to 75 minutes.

There's our beautiful, handsome baked potato boy.

So one thing that I noticed here is that the skin is nice

and taut and almost a little bit crispy

and that's thanks to that oil,

and the inside is nice and steamy.

Mm, it's very creamy, very tasty.

This is kind of a blank canvas.

It's nicely cooked,

but it doesn't have that much going on, on it's own.

Twice baked potato, we got a baked potato

and now we're gonna bake it again.

We're gonna cut it open,

and then we're gonna scoop the flesh of the potato out,

taking care not to mess up the skin.

We're gonna mash that up

with a pinch of salt and some melted butter

and then we're gonna pack those mashed potatoes

into just one half and pop it in a 450 degree oven

for 20 to 25 minutes.

Honestly, a lot of potato cooking

is just kind about novelty,

but this is pretty cool looking.

The outside of the mashed part is lightly browned,

not crisp but great flavor and the skin is not quite

as caramelized as I'd like it to be,

but this is definitely a delicious way to cook a potato.

Salt-baked potato.

In this method, we're gonna use salt as a conductor.

First, we're gonna take some kosher salt,

and then make a nice little bed for our potato.

Nestle it in and then totally cover it.

Then we're gonna pop it into a 400 degree oven

for about 45 minutes.

All right, let's bring it out of the salt first.

The skin feels very, very dry,

but it's not really crisp.

Breaking into it, the interior is nicely cooked.

It's not bad, but surprisingly none of the salt

penetrated it at all, so it's fine,

but maybe a waste of salt.

Roasted potato.

So here we have a couple of potatoes that we've peeled,

we cut them in half and then we tossed them

with a little bit of olive oil and salt,

and we're gonna roast these really simply

in a 425 degree oven for 45 to 50 minutes.

So these were totally raw when they went into the oven.

We've got some good browning where there was contact

with the sheet pan, but the rest is kind of meh.

There's almost a skin that's formed around the outside.

It's not bad, the inside is fluffy and tender,

but the outside isn't very crispy.

I think we can do better.

Boiled and roasted potato, let's try this again.

Same potatoes as last time,

but these we boiled in salted water first.

They already have a little bit more texture on the outside,

and they're fully cooked,

so we're basically just crisping these in the oven.

[chiming]

Wow, these look amazing.

There's way more color and it's way more uniform.

That's because these were already fully cooked

when they went into the oven,

so they didn't steam as much which prevents caramelization.

Mm, these are delicious!

Super well-seasoned, extremely crunchy, great potato flavor.

This is a fantastic way to roast a potato.

Scalloped potatoes.

So we're gonna cut these potatoes really thinly

on a mandoline and then layer them

into this buttered baking dish with some cream,

a little bit of butter

and those are gonna bake at 400 degrees for 60 minutes

to produce a nice, rich scoopable side dish.

These smell amazing.

You've got a little bit of browning

just to the parts that were exposed either

to the hot sides of the pan or the heat of the oven.

Everything seems to be cooked very nicely.

Mm, that's delicious.

Cooking them in a fatty, dairy-based medium produced

a nice contrast to the starchiness of the potato.

En papillote.

So now we're gonna cook potatoes

in a method called en papillote

which is a French term that means in parchment.

We're gonna take our thinly sliced potatoes,

put them in the middle of our parchment.

Olive oil, salt, we're gonna fold that up

into a nice little package,

and then we're gonna pop that

in a 400 degree oven for 45 minutes.

[chiming]

Okay, so you can see that the potatoes have kind

of steamed in their own situation.

They didn't take on any color.

They're just kind of cooked through.

They're tasty, but it's pretty much

just a steamed potato.

This would be much more delicious

if there were other seasonings in there

that could kind of lend some flavor to the potatoes.

Hasselback potato, we're gonna take a peeled potato,

and we're gonna take a very sharp knife

and we're gonna make thin slices all down the potato

about an eight of an inch apart

to create layers that will all crisp up individually.

We're gonna salt it, brush it with a little bit

of melted butter and put it in a 400 degree oven

for 40 to 50 minutes.

This is kind of cool.

It kind of looks like you took potato chips,

and then stuck them together

and then, that's not really what it's like at all.

The edges are brown but they're not crispy.

Honestly, this is probably cooler looking

than it is tasting, not my favorite way to cook a potato.

Steamed potato.

We've got our boiling water.

We're gonna drop this potato right into the steamer basket,

close the lid and walk away.

There's really nothing remarkable

about this from the outside.

It's nicely cooked, but there's no salt at all

and that's just not how steaming works.

It's not bad, but it isn't bringing much to the table.

Ironed potato.

We're gonna put the potatoes in a foil pouch

with a little olive oil and salt,

and then just go to town with this hot iron.

Let's take a look at what's going on inside.

Yeah, those are not fully cooked.

I would not recommend this method.

Instant pot potato.

Potato goes in, add some water to create steam,

seal it up and let her rip for 115 minutes on high.

Now we're gonna depressurize and there's our potato.

Let's be honest, it's totally fine, it's totally cooked,

but it seems like a whole lot of hassle

when you could just as easily bake it.

Boiled potatoes.

All right, we're gonna try out three slightly different ways

of boiling potatoes.

We've got one whole potato,

we've got another whole potato,

and here we also have some peeled and cubed potatoes.

So this first potato went into salted water

that was already boiling.

These other potatoes went into salted cold water,

and we're gonna bring them up to a simmer.

These are all gonna take different amounts

of time to cook and are gonna cook really differently.

A good way to tell if a boiled potato is done

is if you can insert a sharp knife into it

and meet no resistance.

So this is the potato we dropped directly

into boiling salted water.

As you can see, the potato's starting

to break apart some and that's because

when you put something this big and dense

in already boiling water,

it's cooking from the outside in.

Mm, but it's definitely fully cooked,

but this middle part has cooked

a lot less than this exterior here, not ideal.

So this is the potato

that we started in cold water,

and slowly brought up to a boil.

No bursting, no exploding,

and that's because the potato was given a chance

to come up to temperature along with the water.

You can see here the center part's nice and tender

and it's pretty much the same texture throughout.

Mm, it's very creamy, has a nice density to it.

It still wants some salt, butter, a lot of things,

but this is definitely the most effective way

to boil a potato that is ready

for further embellishment later on.

Finally, here we have potatoes

that we peeled, cut into pieces, put into cold salted water

and brought up to a boil from there.

They look nice and evenly cooked, mm.

Since we peeled the potato,

the salt that was in the boiling water

was able to work it's way into the potato

and season it a lot better than the other methods.

In the end though, if I'm gonna make mashed potatoes

I want a whole potato

that's been brought up from cold.

Hand mashed potatoes.

Now we're gonna try a few different ways

of mashing potatoes,

and in each case we're gonna start with potatoes

that we boiled using the up from cold method.

Since we cooked them with their skin on,

we're just gonna wait until they're cool enough to handle

and then the skin will just start

to slip off nice and easy just like that.

All right, when most people think about mashing potatoes,

they think of using a potato masher.

So they use something like this or like this, not this.

This I guess, nope.

Yeah that'll work.

At this point I'm gonna start

adding some hot butter and milk, a pinch of salt.

Keep on mashing 'til we get something relatively uniform.

So our hand mashed potatoes are mostly incorporated,

but still a little bit chunky.

The flavor's good, but overall the texture is kind of dense.

It's a bit rough,

but it's a nice rustic mashed potato preparation.

Riced mashed potatoes.

Now we're gonna make mashed potatoes with a ricer.

We're gonna load the pieces

of cooked, peeled potato into it,

squeeze the handle and these tiny little pieces

of potato are gonna come out.

Then we're gonna stir in some liquid fat,

and there you have rice mashed potatoes.

So with the ricer, you start off with much smaller pieces

of potato and it's a lot smoother and more uniform.

It's easier to incorporate the fat.

Mm, really, really creamy.

This is more of your restaurant-style mashed potatoes.

It's just a little bit more elegant.

Stand mixer mashed potatoes.

We mashed them with a masher, we mashed them with a ricer,

now we're gonna try using a stand mixer

with a paddle attachment to just see what happens.

[chiming]

So these potatoes got all kinds of blunt force trauma.

It has almost a dough-like consistency

which is what happens when potatoes get overworked.

Ugh, yuck.

It's really gummy and you still have some chunks

of unincorporated potato in there, huge bummer.

Food processor mashed potatoes.

We're gonna try this with a Cuisinart Food Processor.

We're gonna take the top off, cut our potato into pieces,

put that in, add a little salt, and some hot fat

and wow, there you have it,

some food processor mashed potatoes.

So these look really simIlar

to the ones we made with the stand mixer.

They have this kind of doughy sort of consistency.

It definitely seems

a little bit better incorporated and more uniform.

Oh, it's so chewy and gluey and pretty hard to swallow.

This is not a good way to make mashed potatoes.

Pommes puree, all right, so pommes puree is basically

just mashed potatoes made with an ungodly amount of fat.

So here we've got a saucepan of hot milk.

We're gonna whisk in a ton of butter

to make a smooth emulsion.

We've got our trusty ricer,

and we're gonna rice these potatoes

right into this hot melted butter mixture.

Stir, add a little salt and there you have it.

Pommes puree, everybody.

This is definitely the most extra way

to make mashed potatoes.

There's so much fat in them that they're almost horrible.

Mm, that's incredibly delicious.

If you're the kind of person who eats mashed potatoes

on special occasions only, go for it.

If you're more like a once a week

mashed potato person, this might be a little much

for your arteries.

Duchess potatoes.

So we've taken our mashed potatoes,

added a little bit of egg,

and put them into this piping bag.

Now we're gonna pipe

little individual mounds of our potato mixture

onto a parchment paper lined sheet pan,

pop them into the oven at 425 degrees for about 15 minutes.

These are adorable!

They're fluffy little puffs of potatoy goodness.

Mm, they're delicious.

They're so light and airy and still have

a little bit of a crunch around the edges.

It's very appealing.

Microwaved potato.

Man, I hate this thing so much.

All right, first we're gonna

take our potato and poke it a few times

to create holes for steam to escape.

A little olive oil, salt, and then pop it in there

and nuke it for five minutes at high power.

Then we're gonna flip it and then nuke it again

for three minutes to finish.

All right, whole cooked potato.

No crispiness and that's 'cause the microwave kind

of steams food from the inside out.

It's definitely cooked, maybe a little overcooked.

Mm, I mean look.

It doesn't taste bad, but it also doesn't taste remarkable.

The main benefit is that it's fast I guess.

Pocket potato.

Whole lot of disclaimers on this thing.

Do not use an conventional oven, do not heat in microwave

for more than four minutes,

do not heat on high, do not expose to open flame,

and those are there because people did those things.

We're gonna put our potato into this pouch

and nuke it for four minutes.

[chiming]

Potato express!

Shh, he's sleeping.

All right, let's take it out.

I mean look, this is a cooked potato,

it feels a little bit less wrinkly and weird

than the regular microwaved potato did,

and it was definitely fast.

There's kind of a funny flavor there.

It kind of tastes like the pouch?

Very efficient but not really my thing.

Pickled potato.

We're gonna start by making our brine.

We've got two cups of apple cider vinegar here,

some sugar, some salt, some black pepper corns,

and we're gonna bring that all up to a boil,

then we're gonna let it cool.

Now we're gonna pour this brine over chunks

of boiled potatoes and let those

marinate overnight in the fridge.

Mm, these smell great, really vinegary and aromatic.

The outside of the chunks feel a little bit mushy,

and they've taken on a little bit

of color from the vinegar.

Mm, a lot of this seasoning made it's way

into the potatoes actually.

Very sweet, salty, acidic.

These would be great on a cheese board or a crudite plate.

Fried potato, who doesn't like a fried potato?

Before we get into french fries,

tater tots, and all that good stuff,

we're gonna take a whole potato,

put it in this deep fryer

at 325 degrees and see what happens.

[chiming]

All right, so this is obviously not the most efficient way

to fry a potato, it took forever.

The skin is really crackly which seems promising.

Honestly, it doesn't taste any different from a baked potato

apart from that crunchy skin

and it's a pretty inconvenient method.

All right, so we tried to fry a whole potato,

not that great,

but everybody knows that french fries are potato royalty.

There are so many different ways

to cut potatoes to fry them.

You got crinkle cut, shoe string, waffle fries,

steak fries, but today we're gonna stick

to classic, thin but not too thin fast food style fries.

Once fried french fries.

Frying potatoes is a temperature game,

so we're gonna try a few different methods

and see what happens.

So we've got our cut potatoes

that we soaked in water to remove some of their starch.

We're gonna fry these first two batches just one time each.

This first fryer is set to 325 degrees,

and we're just gonna fry it that temperature

until they're done.

This next fryer is not on at all.

We're gonna drop the cut potatoes in,

crank the heat, and let it slowly increase

until the potatoes are fried.

So these are the ones we fried all the way through at 325.

You can already tell they're not super crispy.

They've got a lot of color on them,

but that's just because they took

so long to cook, let's try 'em.

Mm, soggy, greasy, good flavor but a little bit mealy,

not what I'm looking for in a french fry.

So these are the ones that we brought up from cold oil.

They already look a lot crispier than the other version.

They cooked through at a lower temp and then crisped up

as the oil got hotter which is kind of cool.

Mm, these are very tasty.

The interior is nice and creamy,

but a smidge leathery on the outside.

Twice fried french fries.

Now we're gonna make french fries

the way that most restaurants make them

which involves frying them once at a lower temperature

around 325 so that they're fully cooked through,

and then again at a higher temperature around 375

to get them really crispy.

So our twice fried french fries

are actually less dark

than the ones that we fried just once,

but are a nice, even brown.

Mm, these are so good.

It's a nice snappy, immediate crunch

and unlike the other ones the inside is perfectly creamy.

This is probably the best, most reliable way

to make great french fries.

Frozen french fries.

Now that we've established that the two step cooking method

is the most direct route to a delicious french fry,

we're gonna take things one step further.

First, we're gonna take cut potatoes

that we've soaked in water overnight,

blanch them in boiling water with a bit of vinegar

until they're nearly cooked through.

Then, we're gonna fry them in hot oil

for just a minute and then we're gonna put them

on a sheet pan to freeze them overnight.

After that, we're gonna take them out

and fry them in very hot directly from frozen.

It's a whole lot of work

and we're gonna see if we can taste the difference.

Honestly, these look perfectly,

and I can already tell they're super, super crispy.

Mm, these are by far the crunchiness

and creamiest that we've had today.

Tater tots.

Making tater tots at home is kind of a process.

We're gonna take some boiled

and peeled potatoes and grate them.

Mix in some potato starch to help bind the mixture,

and some salt to season it all.

Then, we're gonna form them

into the classic tater tot cylinder

and fry them in 375 degree oil until they're golden brown.

Look at those!

Wow, these look great.

Because we started with grated potato,

you have these craggy, crispy edges.

They look fluffy and tender on the inside.

Mm, these are actually so much better

than the bagged ones.

You've got all the crispiness of a french fry

with the fluffiness of a baked potato, highly recommend.

Potato chips.

Don't worry, we wouldn't forget chips.

We're gonna slice our potatoes really thinly on a mandoline,

soak them in several changes of cold water overnight

to get some of the starch off of them,

then we're gonna drain them, pat them dry,

and fry them at 300 degrees,

stirring them so that they don't stick

until they're brown and crispy.

[chiming]

One of the things that I like about making potato chips

at home is that you can take them a little darker

than the store-bought ones.

Mm, salty, shatteringly crisp,

deep dark roasty potato flavor, can't argue with that.

Pommes souffle.

So what we're trying to make here

is something that's kind of like

a potato chip french fry hybrid.

It's a French method for making potatoes

that puff up kind of like a 3D Dorito.

What we're gonna do is cut this potato

into thick potato chip sized pieces, rinse them,

then fry them once at a lower temperature

and then again at a higher temperature

so they make a crispy little potato balloon,

and that did not work.

Well, here we have an attempted pommes souffle.

They did not souffle even kind of.

They're floppy, a little greasy, not at all puffed.

They don't taste bad, but it's kind of a disappointment.

Pan-fried smashed potato.

We're gonna start here with a whole baked potato.

We're gonna get some olive oil really hot in a skillet,

squish the potato gently to flatten it,

and then drop it into this pan and fry it

until it's browned on both sides.

So this would definitely work a lot better

with a bunch of smaller potatoes.

This one kind of broke up and because it was big

there wasn't as much pan contact

which means less browning and less deliciousness.

It's not bad, good flavor from the olive oil,

but the ratio of crispy to creamy is not ideal.

Home fries 1.0.

Home fries are a diner classic,

and we're gonna try them two ways.

First we're gonna take these raw, cubed and soaked potatoes,

drain them and put them into a hot pan

with a bit of oil where hopefully

they'll get nice and browned.

[chiming]

Okay, you can see some nice browning on those edges,

but pretty much anything

that wasn't in direct contact with the heat

didn't get any color which is pretty unappealing.

They're not bad,

but the exterior is actually a little bit tough, not crispy,

and they're pretty greasy.

Let's try this again.

Home fries 2.0.

Okay, we're gonna try this again,

but this time we're gonna start with potatoes

that have already been fully cooked

in salted boiling water.

Same deal, cubed, into a pan with hot oil

until they're nice and browned.

Okay, you can already tell that there's a bit more color

and these definitely look crispier.

Mm, so much better.

The inside is nice and fluffy and well-seasoned

because they were pre-cooked

and they got a lot crustier.

This is a way better way to make home fries.

Hash browns, another diner classic.

We're gonna take these grated potatoes

that we've soaked in water overnight,

wrap them in this clean towel

and squeeze out as much water as we possibly can.

Water is the enemy of browning.

Then, we're gonna cook them in a very hot skillet

with vegetable oil until they're good and crispy.

So I can tell that there's gonna be a lot of cool contrast

here between these dark edges,

and then these barely cooked interior pieces.

Yeah, you can really taste that contrast, it's so good.

I want a runny egg and some hot sauce to dip this in.

Pommes Anna, another Frenchy sounding thing.

The idea here is to make a buttery little cake

out of sliced potatoes.

We're gonna heat a good amount of butter

in a non-stick skillet,

dry out some thinly sliced and soaked potatoes,

and start to layer them into the skillet,

adding more butter and seasoning with salt as we go.

Then we're gonna cover it so that the potatoes steam

while the bottom side browns.

Flip it onto a plate,

and slide it back into the pan

to brown the other side.

[chiming]

[speaking foreign language]

It's like a little potato flower, mm.

Oh, I love how crisp the outside is

and how tender and buttery the inside is, very elegante.

Stir-fried potato.

Now we're gonna make a version

of Szechuan-style sour and spicy stir-fried potatoes,

but without all of the seasonings

that would usually go into that dish.

We're gonna start with Julienne potatoes,

dry them off well, and get them into a smoking hot pan

with a little bit of oil.

We're not trying to brown them,

just trying to cook off some of that rawness.

We're gonna add a little bit

of soy sauce and vinegar to season and we're done.

I love this dish.

These are just barely cooked with no browning to speak of

and definitely no crumbliness or creaminess.

These are so tasty.

They have a really unique, still snappy texture,

and great umami flavor.

If you see this dish on a menu, order it.

Dehydrated potato.

We've got a boiled potato here, we're gonna slice it thinly,

lay it out on these racks

and then put it inside the dehydrator

and let it go overnight.

Okay, these are really light and really dry

and flavor-wise, oh, no, no.

These are not supposed to be eaten this way, gross.

George Foreman potato.

We're gonna take an already baked potato,

and really squish it to get it to close.

I mean, it kind of looks like

it was run over by a car.

It's actually kind of tough,

probably could of used more oil to get it crispier.

Not too similar from our smashed and pan-fried method,

but kind of a little bit more annoying.

Waffle iron potato.

We've got our waffle iron nice and hot.

We're gonna brush it down with some melted butter,

and then load in some potatoes

that we've Julienned and dried off the best we can.

Close the lid and hope for the best.

This is actually pretty rad.

It just looks like a big hashbrown, mm.

You know what?

This is surprisingly delicious,

but at the same time I don't think I want

to haul out a waffle maker every time

I wanna make a hash brown.

Rotisserie potato, all right well,

for whatever reason we're gonna try to rotisserie a potato.

We're gonna make a little guide hole in it

with a skewer and then I'm gonna try

to load the potato onto this demonic looking apparatus

without maiming myself.

A little bit of olive oil, salt, and around he goes.

Meals on wheels.

I was actually too afraid

to remove any of these metal parts, so here we are.

Look, it's tender throughout,

but it's also just about the most annoying way

to basically bake a potato.

Sous-vide potato.

First we're gonna load our sliced potatoes

into a bag with some olive oil and salt,

and then we're gonna use this easy-to-operate vacuum sealer

to remove all of the air.

All right, okay, great, thank you, Veronica.

And then we're gonna put it in this water bath

to cook at 190 degrees for about 30 minutes.

[chiming]

All right, let's get these out of the bag.

These look kind of cool actually.

It almost seems like the olive oil and the potato liquid

emulsified to form some kind of sauce.

Wow, these actually taste amazing!

They're rich, dense, and they're incredible

on their own but they'd make an even better potato salad.

I was skeptical but honestly this is some

of the best we've had so far.

Dishwasher potato, let's try it out.

Potato goes in, close the door, and the secret code

is pro-wash, pro-scrub upper high temp wash.

All right, good that worked.

Sorry, I don't have a dishwasher, guys.

Oh whoa, I can't see.

My glasses are fogged up.

Okay got it, dishwasher potato.

[chiming]

I think it's maybe cooked.

It certainly doesn't feel cooked,

and that's because it is not cooked.

This is not a cooked potato.

Three and a half hours in the dishwasher, yeah,

I am not eating this.

It also smells like soap.

Rollie potato, truly I do not know why my director

is making me use this weird made for TV device

that is made expressly for cooking eggs and nothing else,

but here we are, folks.

Ugh, see what happens I guess.

Ew, oh no, no.

Why is it like that?

Now I have to get it out.

Ugh, this is disgusting.

[chiming]

Well, I hope you're happy, Rusty.

These are potatoes that were just warmed up in the Rollie.

Yeah, it tastes like mashed potatoes and plastic.

There's literally no reason

to try to cook any potato product in this cursed device.

Slow cooker potato.

I don't know why you would ever wanna do this,

but we've clearly got a lot of time on our hands.

We're gonna poke some holes in it, olive oil, salt,

and then wrap it in foil

before putting it in the cooker for five hours.

Hopefully good things come to those who wait,

and it looks pretty unremarkable.

It's a little damp I guess.

It looks cooked inside.

Yeah, totally fine, but definitely not anything

I'd wanna wait five hours for.

Air-fried potato.

This is my friend R2-D2.

It's basically just a convection oven

that takes up space on your counter

unlike the convection oven that you already have.

We're gonna poke holes in our potato, oil and salt,

and put it in here to quote unquote fry

at 400 degrees for about 40 minutes.

So the exterior definitely feels a little bit more crisp

than your standard baked potato,

and it's maybe a smidge darker,

but the inside looks pretty much the same.

Yeah, very baked potatoy.

I can't see any reason to pull out one

of these bizarre devices just to make a potato like this.

Air-fried french fries.

All right fine, so a whole fried potato

is not really the promise of the air fryer.

The whole idea is to make fried foods,

but with less oil.

So, let's try out some french fries.

We're gonna oil them up, salt,

and then pop them

in this device for 20 minutes at 400 degrees.

[chiming]

So they do seem kind of fried,

but they also look pretty dried out.

Mm, yeah they're not awful,

but also kind of weirdly desiccated.

Not really my cup of tea.

Grilled potato four ways.

They've all got a little bit of olive oil and salt on them.

We've got a whole potato wrapped in foil.

The naked potato, some potato planks,

and we have a potato cabob.

They're all gonna take different amounts of time to cook,

so we'll take them off as they're ready.

[chiming]

Hm, this skin feels crunchy in a way

that doesn't seem promising.

Yeah, it looks really unevenly cooked inside,

and, oh, yeah it's super dried out.

I would be pretty bummed out if somebody

served me this.

Same whole potato but wrapped in foil this time.

This one looks way better,

probably because it was able to steam cook in that foil.

If you were trying to cook whole potatoes on the grill,

this is a way better method,

but it isn't really distinctive in any way.

[chiming]

The exterior on these potato planks

you've got browning but a little bit

of that leatheriness.

Mm, pretty tasty but a little bit dried out.

Probably would of been better

if we cooked it over charcoal.

All right, let me just get these off this skewer.

Because there's more surface area,

they actually colored a little bit more

than the plank potatoes did.

Mm, but also a little bit more dried out

than the last ones.

This really doesn't seem worth it to be honest.

Potato on a stick.

All right so I whittled the stick,

I stuck a potato on it,

and we're just gonna cook it over the campfire

like a hot dog and see how long I can do this

without asphyxiating.

[coughing]

Oh, and I lost my potato.

Hold on, can somebody hand me tongs?

All right well yeah, we're calling it.

[chiming]

All right so our potato on a stick

didn't cook as long as we wanted it to,

but we'll see what we got.

I'm gonna take this piece of stick out so I don't choke.

Yeah it definitely does not feel fully cooked,

and it's pretty charred.

There is a part of this that did cook.

Oh, that's really bad.

It's pretty acrid and burnt tasting.

Yeah, not a great method.

Oh, smoky.

Coal roasted potato three ways.

Now we're gonna try out cooking potatoes

directly on the coals of a campfire.

We've got a whole potato wrapped in foil,

and also one that's completely naked

that we're gonna put next to it.

We've also got a foil pack of cubed potatoes

that we're gonna drop right in here.

We're gonna come back in 15 to 20 minutes

and see what happens.

So this is the one we put in totally naked,

and it's pretty carbonized.

Ideally you would slip this skin off,

but it's too burned to do that.

It's definitely cooked.

A lot less smoky than I'd expect,

and we wasted a lot of potato.

So, less than ideal.

[chiming]

All right, let's unwrap this bad boy.

We've got a little bit of charring here,

and the foil is pretty conductive,

but it also protected it from getting totally burnt.

The inside looks pretty nice.

Mm, it's pretty good.

This would probably be the best way to cook whole potatoes

if you were camping.

[chiming]

All right, let's cut open that foil pack.

Okay, surprisingly these didn't take on

any color despite the fact

that they were right on the coals.

It seemed like they just kind of steamed in their juices.

Doesn't taste bad, but would definitely be tastier

if you threw in some onions, garlic, chilies

or something like that to season them.

Cast iron cooker potato.

I think it's supposed to be kind of like a mini oven.

You open it up, you put the potato in, lock it

and you lower it into the fire carefully.

That's gonna sit there for four hours.

Okay, this thing is really hot and lift off.

[chiming]

All right, so we waited like an hour for this cool.

Let's open it up.

The skin is super dry and almost too tough to cut through.

Ew, this skin looks like a husk

like a burnt coconut shell or something.

Let's try a little piece I guess.

[groans]

It just tastes like burnt potato skin.

Not sure if we did this right,

but this is gross.

Smoked potato, all right,

we've got our little charcoal smoker.

We're gonna pop our potato right in there off the heat,

and let the low indirect heat and smoke

slowly circulate and hopefully cook the potato.

This is gonna take a while,

and there's our hopefully smoked potato.

I can tell just by looking at it

that it lost quite a bit of moisture

being exposed to the low, dry heat for so much time,

but it is fully cooked.

Mm, definitely some smoky flavor,

but it's kind of weird on it's own.

It would be so much better mashed up

with some butter or sour cream.

Blow torched potato.

All right, you know the drill.

We got a potato, we got a blow torch,

we're gonna blow torch the potato.

Wow, that's getting really dark.

I think the aluminum foil might be burning

which can't be healthy, let's just call it.

The exterior is totally burnt.

The inside is still really, really hard and uncooked.

There's a faint perfume of what I can only assume

is vaporized aluminum.

Yeah, sorry y'all, I am not eating this.

Car engine cooked potato.

We've got a handful of cubed potatoes

in a foil pack, little oil, little salt.

Fold it up and wedge it right in there.

Then we're gonna leave the engine running for a few hours

and see if anything happens.

All right, we're gonna pop the hood,

and check out our potatoes.

Well, the package feels warm

which I guess is a good sign.

Yeah I mean they are slightly softer

than they were at first,

but they're definitely not cooked.

Let's see.

Yeah I mean it doesn't smell

like a car engine, so that's good.

But yeah, not cooked enough to eat.

Electrocuted potato, I am pretty terrified to be honest.

We've got these two metal leads,

and we're gonna spike the potato onto them.

This is connected to a gasoline-powered generator

and we're gonna plug it into this giant dimmer switch.

We're gonna flip it on,

and then crank that dial all the way up to 140 volts.

All right, let's see if this is working,

and yep that's 140 volts.

All right, I'm gonna stand back.

Well it's starting to bubble and blacken around those leads

and smoke, oh wow.

Yeah, something's definitely happening.

All right, so let's just power this whole situation down.

If it's not cooked by now, it's never gonna cook.

[chiming]

I'm not sure that 140 volts was enough

to actually cook this potato.

It still feels pretty hard, a little bit warm.

It seems like the only part that cooked

was right around where those leads went in,

and there's a little bit of blackening.

You cut it open and, yeah,

the part seems kind of a little bit cooked.

I mean, it tastes like a cooked potato,

just that littlest bit.

It doesn't really taste all

that different from anything else,

but it's pretty impressive nonetheless.

To be honest I'm just glad to be alive.

Electrocuted pickled potato.

This potato's been soaking in a vinegar and salt water brine

and we're hoping that it might make it more conductive.

Whoa, definitely a lot more steaming going on.

I think this might actually cook it.

Let's power it down and check her out.

[chiming]

All right, so even though this one was steaming more,

it feels just as warm as the last potato did.

Oh yeah, it's even more raw inside

than the first one was honestly.

Let's give that little cooked part a taste.

Mm, it's saltier for sure and more burnt tasting

but I don't know this whole thing

was kind of a fail.

I think next time we're gonna need to use more power.

All right, so we cooked a lot of potatoes

a whole lot of ways.

What did we learn?

Well, for the most part,

a whole potato is a whole potato is a whole potato.

We saw the biggest difference between methods

when we broke the potatoes down

into different shapes and sizes.

Patience is a virtue sometimes,

and you can't rush such a dense tuber.

Also, a lot of our favorite methods

were actually cooked multiple times

which produced the most interesting contrast.

Thanks for watching everybody,

and if you have a favorite way

to cook a potato that we forgot, drop it in the comments.