The temptation to reference Samwise in the title must have been immense.

I baked potatoes without piercing for about 30 years with no problem.

Then I got that One Potato.  The cleanup was endless.

A few knife pokes just make me feel better.

Poh-tae-toes 101: "Boil em, Mash em, Stick em in a stew."

Come on Adam, that title was *right there*.

My parents owned an old fashioned fish and chip shop in the 1970s here in New Zealand, and as a wee boy I would sometimes go with my father to the local market (twice a week) to buy potatoes as the sun came up. he'd examine the varieties of potatoes on offer and haggle a price and then he'd heft 25lb hessian sacks into our van. We had a peeling machine and a chip slicer, my first after school job as a kid at all of ten years old was 20c an hour eyeing the potatoes when they came out of the peeler then feeding them into the chipper, and into the big water bath where they would rest overnight in constant running water to rinse out the starch. Then each morning big baskets of the chips would be drained and pre-cooked in the vats before being spread out on big trays to cool before being stored in the big chiller out the back. Then they would be brought out as needed to be cooked a second time for customers. Damn, they were fine chips! My dad would also spend his mornings meeting the small local trawlers as they came in with the dawn catch to buy the fish for the shop, and he'd spend long hours on his feet filleting every fish he brought. All the fish cakes, hotdogs etc were hand made by him and mum with the smallgoods coming (also handmade) from a butcher round the road. Today you'd need to go to a Michelin starred gastro-pub for that kind of quality food, but back then it was how a good, middle class living was made.

Here’s an idea for your Food 101 series of videos: onions! I find myself perplexed by the various things people say about cooking onions, especially as an ingredient to another dish. When I see people say, “yeah, sweat the onions for 3 minutes”, that doesn’t feel like nearly enough time! And their onions are slightly brown and jammy, and I’m like “there’s no way that took only 3 minutes…” Another good thing to cover is that while you might start onions down the caramelization path, you can’t truly get caramelized onions in 10-15 minutes. Also, what methods of heating (high heat for short time, medium heat for long time, etc.) end up with what result? Anyway, these are just thoughts, and I find there isn’t really a central resource/video that goes through them all well. Great videos, as always!

Something I learned from my parents, growing up in a household where we ate a lot more potatoes than pasta or rice, is to always boil more potatoes than you need for today so that you can pan fry the rest tomorrow or the day after that. You'd want to boil them first anyway (as Adam demonstrated in the video) and now you get to enjoy boiled potatoes one day and pan fried potatoes the next.

So, I'm a southerner and I don't know if this is a regional thing or not, but my great grandmother(she lived through the great depression, and her husband was in the Pacific front during WW2) made fried potatoes in a way that's basically boiling-then-frying, but without the need for a second pan. She'd fill a skillet with potatoes, add some oil and a little bit of water, and cook them covered on a medium-ish heat. When they were tender, she'd crank up the heat and brown them.

Little fun potato history fact. Before the potato blight, the average working poor Irish man ate 12 to 14 lbs of potatoes per day. That's approximately 90% of their calories. Supplemented with garden vegetables and the occasional bit of meat, eggs, and/or dairy, and even the poorest of the working Irish men suffered no major nutritional deficiencies despite eating mostly a single crop. That is how nutritionally varied and dense the potato is. What's more is its one of the heartiest edible plants. If you're looking to start growing your own food, potatoes are a great place to start.

I was just thinking to myself "man I really need to learn how to cook potatoes" and here we are

9:44 the reason it gets more crispy is actually due to an increased surface area, not due to an increased temperature

I have personally experienced potato explosion in the oven - it does happen, so DO NOT neglect your spud piercing!

Loving the return two weeks in a row of Ragusea 101 cooking videos! Thanks, Adam!

From a potato-eating-country: early potatoes (like the ones you boiled) with butter, salt and dill (instead of parsley) is also extremely tasty. If you have access to cottage cheese/curd, also goes along with them nicely

The boiled baby potatoes are insanely underrated. When i was losing weight aggressively i completely cut out rice and substituted it for these potatoes and could chow down on close to a pound for like 350 calories it's great for a carb source.

This channel has taught me so much about cooking over the years, I'm glad you still make videos like this.

This guy dropped a Mitch Hedberg reference in the middle of a cooking video. I f***ing love this channel lol.

When boiling if you make the water more acidic by adding vinegar then the potatoes will break down less during cooking and it will be easier to pan fry them for home fries. And if you add baking soda they will break down more making them great for roasting in the oven because the surface will get more "busted up" so you will get more crispy bits!

one thing I noticed about potatoes while grocery shopping, in the US theyre almost always clean, washed and have this glossy vaxy looks while in europe nobody bothers to even wash them and they're just straight from the ground with solid layer of dust and soil on them. Anyway always wash your potatoes and peel them

Ragusea and Lagerstrom dropping Potatoes 101 and Eggs 101 in the same day just as I am craving some serious diner food. Now I need someone to upload weak diner coffee 101 and my weekend is going to be set.

I hope Adam sees this comment because I think he would be genuinely interested.

The comment of “back in the day” potatoes may have been more blemished or covered in other un nice things really stood out to me because of my experience living in Kazakhstan. There, the potatoes come to the grocery stores and supermarkets completely covered in soil and mud. I swear the Kazakh people pay a premium just due to the amount of weight the dirt adds to the potatoes and thus the price at checkout. I could never clean them enough to feel comfortable eating them without peeling, and, even when peeled, I found many more rotten potatoes than I am used to in the states.

I’ve wondered why the Kazakh farmers or producers don’t wash the potatoes before sale, and I’m skeptical of the simple answer of “it’s just a poorer country”.