Boiled Potatoes

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Ingredients 4 ingredients

Keep children and pets away from the hob and the oven, and keep oven gloves and a lid within reach.

Oven and hot trays. Use dry oven gloves for trays and dishes: a hot tray looks just like a cold one. Open the oven door away from your face and let the first rush of heat out.
Boiling water and steam. Turn pan handles inward, away from the edge of the hob. Lift lids away from you, and pour hot water away from your body: steam burns too.

For boiled potatoes, if they are to be served whole, select those of the same shape and size.
Wash them under a stream of water with a vegetable brush.
Pare carefully so as not to waste the potato, and evenly, that they may look smooth and shapely.
Cook them in a granite-ware kettle or covered saucepan, in enough salted boiling water to just cover them.
If cold water is used, there is a greater loss of potash salts by solution, because of the longer time of exposure to the action of the liquid.
The proportion of salt should be one teaspoon to a quart of water.
Potatoes being already hydrated, it makes no great difference whether they are put into hot or cold water, except in the time which will be required to boil them and the slight loss of salts.
For medium-sized potatoes from thirty to forty minutes will be necessary after they begin to boil.
The moment they feel soft when pierced with a fork they are done.
Take them at once from the fire, drain off all the water, and dry them by gently moving the pan back and forth over the top of the stove for a minute.
Serve as quickly as possible.
Unless they are to be eaten at once, it is better to mash them, and keep them in the oven until needed.