Sometimes you learn from a failure

Time: 50 Minutes

Ingredient Availability: 5/5

Difficulty: 2/5

Just looking at the picture for this recipe was enough for me to attempt making it. On top of that, the ingredient list is very slim and the steps were simple and straightforward. Imagine a potato chip ball. That’s what I wanted to end up with. As you can see, that’s not exactly what I got.

Key Ingredients & Omissions:

I used every ingredient that the recipe called for and you need to to get anything out of it. The recipe says to use large potatoes and if you want to get 3-4 ‘puffs’ from each stack, you will need a pretty huge potato if you’re using a 2 inch ring cutter. Just something to keep in mind.

Tools:

• Large pot for frying

• 2” ring cutter (I didn’t have this)

• Sharp Knife or Mandolin

Cooking Review:

Prep: 18 minutes

It took me 18 minutes to get the oil ready and slice the two potatoes on a mandolin. I will admit that I missed that the recipe says to peel the potatoes, but I don’t think that it would be that big of a deal, especially if you’re using a ring cutter. After slicing the potatoes, I dusted about half of the potatoes with cornstarch, used a pastry brush to evenly distribute the starch and topped them with the other half of potato slices. Then, I dabbed the potatoes with a paper towel to remove excess water. I was supposed to use a ring cutter to cut out circles in the potatoes at this point, but I don’t have any ring cutters.

Cooking: 30 minutes

I cooked the potatoes in 5 batches. The recipe says to cook the potatoes for 20 seconds per side, but that was nowhere near enough time to get any browning on the potatoes. Each batch took about 5 minutes to get decent browning on them, but even then they didn’t stay crispy unless cooked longer. After each batch, the potatoes were seasoned with salt. Something to point out is that a good number of the potato stacks didn’t stick together when being transferred into the oil, so I ended up with a fair number of singular ‘chips’.

Analysis:

Visually, these were a big disappointment. Sure, I didn’t peel the potatoes (which’s shouldn’t matter if you’re jut going to cut out the inside anyway), and I didn’t have a ring cutter to cut the stacks, but I was expecting this to somehow workout anyway. I’m thinking that the ring cutter probably somewhat seals the two slices of potato together, giving them a better chance to puff into a ball. Unfortunately, this wasn’t clear or explained in the recipe. I think it was a good thing I tried this, so everyone considering making this knows that if you don’t have a ring cutter or something similar, these are probably not going to puff. Besides the appearance, if you disregard the 40 seconds the recipe wants you to cook the potatoes and let them get fairly brown, they turn out pretty good flavor wise. The texture on the ones cooked for longer is very crispy and they taste a lot like potato chips. The ones cooked less retained a soft interior with a slightly crispy edge. I enjoyed both of them. At the end of the day, If you just want to fry up some potato slices and season them with salt, they will taste good. That’s what essentially happened here. The problem is that the expectations were a little higher than that. I’ll probably give this one another shot when I get a ring cutter and see if I can get more to puff (I was able to get one successful puff this time), but I see some other issues with this recipe. I’m not sure you’ll be able to find a russet potato where you can get 3-4 2” rounds out of a slice (maybe if you slice lengthwise). Even with 2” rounds, I doubt 20 seconds per side would produce enough browning or puffing. While I did enjoy the final result of this recipe, I can’t really rate it very highly. Granted, I didn’t use the ring cutter, which may have solved the puffing problem, but I feel like the importance of this tool should have been emphasized. Also, I have a hard time believing the cooking time. With that being said, I’m giving this recipe a 6/10. I’m close to giving it a 5 for essentially being a failure, but hey, fried and salted potatoes still taste good.