A $3 bag of potatoes turned into my best cooking week in months

I always thought potatoes were boring filler food, you know, just something to bulk up a plate. But last Tuesday I had like $12 left for the whole week of food and grabbed a 5 pound bag on a whim. I roasted them with oil and salt one night, made a mash with some butter the next, and then I tried smashing them flat after boiling and crisping them up in a pan. That smashed version with garlic powder was honestly better than half the stuff I buy at restaurants. I even made potato soup with some leftover onion and a splash of milk, which stretched to two lunches. It totally flipped my view on what a cheap ingredient can do if you just try different things. Has anyone else found a boring ingredient they suddenly got obsessed with?

3 comments

3 Comments

johnson.daniel9d ago

Nah I gotta disagree with you on this one honestly. Potatoes are not boring, they're just the most reliable thing in the kitchen and people take them for granted. You basically just discovered what home cooks have known forever which is that a potato can be 50 different meals depending on how you cut it and what you put on it. Give me a bag of potatoes and some basic seasonings over a fancy prepped meal kit any day. Like you said that smashed garlic one slaps and it costs pennies compared to takeout.

oscarw833d ago

Did my buddy really just spend an hour telling me his "invention" of putting cheese on a baked potato like he discovered fire?

the_ray9d ago

Toss a potato in the microwave for 6 minutes, flip it, go another 5, and you got a baked potato that beats any drive-thru side for about 20 cents. Slice em thin, toss with oil and salt, lay em on a sheet pan in a single layer at 400 degrees for 25 minutes, flip halfway, and you got better chips than a bag. If you got old potatoes starting to sprout, just peel deeper, boil em, mash em with butter and a splash of milk, and they taste like you spent way more time than you did. Potatoes are basically the workhorse of a kitchen once you stop overthinking em.