5

What would happen if you put your uncooked potatos in a blender and then cooked the result?

Would you get mashed potatos? Faster?

rumtscho
  • 134,346
  • 44
  • 300
  • 545
Präriewolf
  • 205
  • 3
  • 8
  • 1
    haha, it all depends how you cook them. I say steaming would be your best option – debug Aug 24 '10 at 16:10
  • 4
    I'm pretty sure it would be a gluey disaster, but why don't you try a small batch and let us know? – Michael Natkin Aug 24 '10 at 16:50
  • 2
    I sometimes dice potatoes before cooking them if I'm trying to make quick mash for the kids. That helps with the time and they turn out fine. I'm not sure what would happen with a blender though. grated might be the quickest... but you might lose a lot of starch in the water. – Sam Holder Aug 24 '10 at 19:24
  • 1
    @Sam Holder - Although with Grading, I find the best thing to do is actually rinse them out of as much of the starch as possible, and then cooking them with some binder such as an egg white, oil, and a bit of cream + your spices / herbs and optional grated hard cheese . – dassouki Aug 24 '10 at 19:34

3 Answers3

5

I doubt that most blenders could handle raw potatoes, though a food processor probably could. The problem with your idea is that they'll be easier to cook before they're mashed, and easier to mash after they're cooked. I see no advantage and plenty of potential disadvantages.

kevins
  • 5,495
  • 4
  • 33
  • 40
  • It's worth noting that blending them after dicing them should work even with weak blenders. I have a very weak one and managed to blend soaked (raw) mung beans, which are pretty tough. – polynomial_donut Oct 26 '18 at 19:46
5

You absolutely can blend raw potatoes! You will need one of the more powerful blenders and not a $30 Walmart one. The result is a potato puree which you can mix ingredients and then pour like a batter in a fry pan to make potato pancakes. I have done this numerous times.

Catija
  • 16,300
  • 8
  • 54
  • 86
mxwp
  • 51
  • 1
  • 1
0

I'm with Michael: it sounds disturbing. I think you could probably get away with it though if you rinsed them after blending, and then saute'd them after in a little (probably a lot) of butter.

I think you need to leech out a little starch or heat it enough for it to start breaking down. Traditional mashed potatoes are lighter, having lost a good bit of their starch in the boiling process.

Mashed new potatoes, or mashed baked potatoes, or any other variation on the whole-cooked-potatoes-mashed theme tend to be much more starchy, but this is somewhat alleviated by the flavors imparted by cooking.

I think, if you just shred them and then cook them, you're going to end up with the worst of both worlds: heavy, not especially tasty, potato mash.

Satanicpuppy
  • 13,216
  • 36
  • 56
  • surely the more finely chopped they are, or even blended, they more starch will come out in the cooking? The problem could be with losing too much starch I would have thought... – Sam Holder Aug 24 '10 at 19:27
  • @Sam Holder: Yea, that's pretty much why I thought they'd set up. – Satanicpuppy Aug 24 '10 at 21:16
  • @SamHolder - I would think the starch that comes out in boiling potatoes (chopped or whatever) would get left behind in the pot when the potato chunks are scooped out after boiling - and so literally left behind, while blended potato would keep the water (and therefore the extra starch) unless extra care is taken to rinse some of that extra starch out. If the starch is lost from the potato to the water, but the water is still in the dish, it isn't really "lost", I suppose. – Megha Dec 31 '16 at 02:42