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Steamed Potatoes
Wash and scrub the potatoes, place them in a steamer, or without a steamer, place them in a colander over a kettle of boiling water. Cover and steam about thirty-five or forty minutes, or until you can pierce them readily with a fork. Allow ten minutes longer for steaming than for boiling potatoes of equal size. When done, remove the. skins quickly and serve in an uncovered dish.
A method rather than a formula, and one that still beats boiling for flavour and texture. A few details are worth pinning down.
- The hinge: serve uncoveredSteamed potatoes carry a lot of surface moisture, and a lid traps it into condensation that turns them soggy. Peel and dish them at once, uncovered, so the surface steam escapes and the flesh stays floury.
- Size, not the clockThirty-five to forty minutes suggests a good-sized old potato, though the recipe itself gives no size or weight. Smaller potatoes will be done sooner and very large ones will take longer; the recipe's own guide is that a fork should pierce them readily.
- Colander over a kettleA "kettle" here is a large pot, not a spouted tea kettle. Any deep pan with a heatproof colander or sieve set above the waterline works; the water must not touch the potatoes. Keep the water at a steady rolling boil and check it hasn't boiled dry partway through.
- Whole and unpeeledSteaming in the skin is deliberate. It keeps the potato from waterlogging and makes the skin slip off in sheets while hot. Hold them in a cloth and peel with a paring knife; they will not peel neatly once cooled.
- Choice of potatoFloury varieties — russet, Maris Piper, King Edward — give the dry, mealy result this method is aiming at. Waxy salad potatoes steam well too but stay firm and are better left in their skins.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield; one medium potato per person as a side is the usual reckoning. Salt after peeling rather than before, since salt will not penetrate the skin in a steamer.
Late nineteenth-century cookery writers often argued for steaming over boiling, on the grounds that boiling leached both flavour and nourishment into water that was then poured down the drain. The point holds up: water-soluble vitamins and minerals do move into boiling water, while steam leaves more of them in the potato. The instruction to allow ten minutes longer than for boiling reflects the fact that heat moves into a potato less quickly in free-flowing steam than in water at the same temperature. The equipment note — "or without a steamer, a colander over a kettle" — allows for kitchens without a purpose-built steamer.