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Steamed Potatoes
Prepare potatoes as for boiled potatoes. Put in small strainer, place over kettle of boiling water, cover tightly, and cook until soft — about thirty minutes. Cover the pot with a double cloth and place on the back of the range.
A bare-bones method from a period when the range always had a kettle going. A few details need translating.
- "Prepare as for boiled potatoes"That means scrubbed, peeled or not, and cut into even pieces if large. Uniform size matters more here than in boiling, since steam circulates unevenly around a crowded strainer.
- The strainer and kettleA colander or wire sieve set over a pot of boiling water, with the water below the base of the strainer. Any modern steamer insert or folding basket does the same job.
- Cover tightlyIf the lid does not seat on the strainer, the steam escapes and the potatoes take far longer. A sheet of foil pressed over the rim under the lid solves an awkward fit.
- Thirty minutesRight for whole medium potatoes. Two-inch chunks are tender in 15 to 20; test with a knife tip rather than the clock.
- The double clothThis is the drying step, not an afterthought. A folded towel over the pot absorbs condensation and the residual heat of the range's cool end dries the surfaces, giving a floury potato rather than a wet one. Off the heat entirely, five minutes with a towel over the pan does the same.
- Watch the waterA kettle can boil dry in half an hour. Start with a good depth and check once partway through.
- YieldFigure one medium potato per person as a side, two if this is standing in as the main starch of the meal.
Steaming rather than boiling was a small point of pride in early twentieth-century domestic science, which held that boiling leached mineral salts and food value into water that then went down the drain. Cookbooks of the period repeat the claim often, and it is broadly right for water-soluble vitamins and minerals, though the science was newer than the confidence with which it was stated. The back of the range — the cooler end of a coal or wood stove — was free real estate for finishing a dish without fuel.