Boiling Is RUINING Your Potatoes — Try These 45 Appalachian Tricks

🔗 Grandma never wrote hers down, so my wife finally did. All 118 plus much more. Get em before they're gone: https://cecilrowe.com Cecil Rowe pulls up a chair and counts down forty-five ways the old mountain kitchens turned a thirty-cent tater into a proud supper — without ever once dropping it in a pot of boiling water. Fried in bacon grease, baked down in the coals, grated into fritters and gravy, doctored, stored, and put to a few downright peculiar uses besides. It's the plain, hard-won sense of an Appalachian kitchen from back when nothing got wasted and nobody wrote a word of it down. The fanned tater that looks like a twenty-dollar plate, Cecil holds back clear to the end — and the plainest one on the whole list, he saves for the very last. In this one, Cecil covers: • Why boiling the lazy way ruins a good tater — and what the mountain kitchens did instead • Fried, baked, buried in the coals, grated into fritters, hash browns, and gravy • Cast-iron seasoning, seed-saving, spring-house storage, and a few peculiar uses for a raw tater • The fanned "$20 tater" with hoop-cheese sawmill gravy he held back till the very end • The plainest tater on the whole list — the one he says about broke him to tell Tell us down in the comments where you're watching from — and what your people called these where you come from. Cecil reads every last one. CHAPTERS 0:00 The tater he never boiled 1:15 The countdown begins 1:26 Starting your taters in cold water 2:19 Salting the water heavy before they go in 3:00 Frying taters and onions in bacon grease 3:48 Leaving them be to set a crust 4:33 Boiling in the jackets, peeling after 5:15 Rinsing the starch off for crisp fried taters 6:07 The test cube that tells you the grease is ready 6:43 Coals on the lid for a stovetop oven 7:29 Rendering fatback for rich pot liquor 8:12 Raw grated fritters fried lacy and crisp 8:45 Pressing hash browns into one golden sheet 9:39 Stretching ground meat with grated tater 10:22 Ricing the mash twice, never the mixer 11:03 Working the mash with saved tater water 11:52 Seasoning a new skillet with a salted tater 12:39 Twice-baked skins stuffed with hoop cheese 13:34 Sawmill pepper gravy over a split-baked tater 14:20 Grated tater in the catfish batter 14:58 Green beans and taters down together with fatback 15:42 Thickening soup with the tater's own starch 16:35 Keeping taters cool in the spring house 17:16 Wrapping keeping taters in newspaper 18:03 A raw tater to shine tarnished silver 18:46 Plugging a leak with a raw tater plug 19:22 Starching a Sunday collar with tater water 20:05 Saving the tater water for tomorrow's gravy 20:50 Handpicking the potato bugs and eggs 21:36 Curing fresh-dug taters in a dark shed 22:20 Digging keepers when the vines die back 22:54 Green and sprouted ones held back for seed 23:32 A cool raw tater against an aching tooth 24:05 Cutting deep around the green and the eyes 24:43 A pinch of sugar to brown a tired winter tater 25:35 Warm milk into the mash, never cold 26:21 One big Sunday pot to feed the week 27:02 Smothering onions and taters low and slow in broth 27:43 Crisping the empty skins into snapping chips 28:23 Mashing with a bottle when there's no masher 29:01 Baking a tater in the coals in a wet cabbage leaf 29:44 Potato soup built rich off a ham bone 30:23 Laying in a sack and rationing it to spring 31:14 A skillet of fried taters for Sunday dinner 31:56 Taters three ways to carry a lean week 32:41 The fanned $20 tater 33:38 The plain cold tater that fed the family 34:49 A word before you go