For Extra Crispy Potatoes, Roast Them On A Pizza Stone
Throughout the history of mankind, we have been engaged in a constant struggle forward to find the best way to cook a potato. In that time, we've made great strides. Latkes, french fries, hash browns, tater tots, and potato chips were all created as steps in this journey.
Any innovation that brought us closer to this goal even created fortunes. According to the New York Times, J.R. Simplot went from a humble farmer to a billionaire in his lifetime because he invented the first frozen french fries.
This isn't just a gastronomic effort either, it's a highly practical one. As Smithsonian Magazine points out, the potato is the fifth most consumed vegetable worldwide. Due to its nutrient-dense profile, and ability to withstand harsh climates, the potato has been used to feed countless people throughout time, and so it only makes sense to figure out how to make these spuds taste good too.
You need to roast potatoes on a pizza stone
One of the most important qualities of any well-cooked potato is a nice crispy texture. If you're dealing with a thin potato chip, you expect a nice sharp crack with each bite. And even if you have something larger like a whole baked potato, you're still going to expect the skin around the fluffy interior to be somewhat crispy as well.
Real Simple claims that one of the best ways to get your spuds extra crispy without breaking out a deep fryer is to use a pizza stone instead. By preheating a pizza stone, you're giving the potatoes a super hot surface to cook on. This will also work magnificently if you have the patience to par-boil your potatoes.
The Daily Record points out that pre-cooking your potatoes and letting them cool completely is the best way to force moisture out of these spuds. Then, all they need is a quick-cooking session on a hot pizza stone, and you'll have perfectly crisp roast potatoes in no time.
What's so great about pizza stones?
Taste of Home adds that because of the specific properties of pizza stones, they're great for cooking frozen potatoes as well. Pizza stones are such great cooking tools because they hold a lot of heat and are exceptionally porous, per Popular Mechanics. Both of these properties are great for getting a well-done pizza crust, but also for creating those perfectly crisp potatoes.
Popular Mechanics says that the porous nature of most pizza stones helps to absorb moisture, and moisture is the number one reason for soggy potatoes (via The Daily Record). So, as Taste of Home points out, when you add frozen foods to their surface, it helps remove the ice crystals that would otherwise leave your french fries looking sad.
It also helps absorb any of the moisture in uncooked potatoes, and push out anything that remains in par-boiled spuds as well. If you add the pizza stone's ability to retain heat to that, then you might find it hard to believe you ever cooked potatoes by any other means.