Al Dente Potatoes

I love to watch cooking shows like Chopped, Top Chef, and Top Chef Masters. Something that happens entirely too often, though, is that the chefs will try to cook rice, pasta, or potatoes in too short a period of time. What gets served to the judges ends up being raw. I have to laugh when I hear the contestant say something like, “Well, I like my potatoes ‘al dente’” or “It’s toothsome!”.

Yesterday, Patrick started some stew meat cooking in the crock pot. I didn’t get around to putting the potatoes in until around 3pm. When cooking potatoes in the crock pot, they take more than the typical 30 minutes or so to cook. In fact, we didn’t end up having our stew until around 8pm, and those potatoes were still rather “al dente”!! (Although, when I reheated my stew today in the microwave, the extra 30 seconds seemed to get them to just about the right level of doneness.)

Lesson learned. Put the potatoes in the crock pot around noon. Or eat raw potatoes. Or “al dente”. Whatever word makes you happy.