If you are like me, you spend tons of time browsing through Pinterest looking for all sorts of foodie inspiration. When I saw a pin for Hasselback Potatoes, I fell in love. I had to try it, especially when the pin said…
“Better than fries! Cut potatoes almost all the way through, drizzle olive oil, butter, some sea salt, and pepper over top and bake @ 425 for 40 minutes.”
So that is exactly what I did. I could not wait for a delectable Hasselback potato to go with dinner.
It turned out dry AND mostly uncooked! I mean we are talking raw potato leather. I smothered it with sour cream but it made no difference. Thank god the smelts were so good and made up for the horrible potato hassle dish! I could not eat it but Reg made a valiant effort.
Verdict?
EPIC FAIL!!!
Perhaps if I had skewered it together it would not have dried out or remained raw in the middle but who knows? It was such a pain in the foodie A$$ I will not be trying it again. Screw the hasselback, I will make my Perfect Baked Potatoes instead.
Sometimes a pretty picture does not live up to the hype!
I have tried these too. I put butter between every slice and x-strong cheddar cheese between every slice and still they were dry and tasteless. I can’t figure out how they could be so bad with all that butter and cheese but they were.
Finally I chopped them all up and put them in the frying pan with some more butter (all the butter had run out) and then they were good!
I am soooooo relieved to hear that Amelia! I put so much oil, butter and salt on and seriously, zero flavour. So happy to hear I’m not the only one who had this experience but I am sorry it happened to you too. Chopped up is a much better idea. Mine ended up in the compost and Reg someone ate his, LOL. It was still crunchy!
I tried them too, I thought I was the fail! Glad to see I was not. LOL I will try once more before I give up. ~Julie
You are definitely not the failure Julie! It’s the recipe. Someone who made them successfully baked them for an hour and a half but man, mine would have totally dried out by then.
This happened to me, too … like potato leather for sure. YECK…..what a waste of a $3 baking potato.
They cook fine if you wrap them tightly in tin foil. That’s the first time I’ve seen a reference to *not* cooking them in tin foil. We had them all the time growing up, mum always puts sliced onion in between the slices too. Sliced onion, button, salt and pepper, wrap in tin foil, bake. Quite nice.
Sounds like using foil is the way to achieve foodie success. Oh onion sounds good too, yum!
I made these but from a recipe on American’s test kitchen and they call them Fan Potatoes. The method was a bit different. After slicing them you need to really rinse them well (this gets rid of the starch so they open nicely) and partially cook them in the microwave (they don’t dry out). They were a big hit.
Rinsing them makes a ton of sense, removing the starch would help a ton. Partially cooking them would also help, thank you!
If I were making these, I’d wrap mine in foil as well.
Or in a covered dish with onions and cheese.
I also do a lot of potato bakes and often, I’ll steam
the rounds before I build a layered potato dish.
We eat a lot of krumpli (potatoes), at our house.
That’s what we call them here, at The Manorl
A covered dish is very clever! That would keep the moisture inside and help it steam. Krumpli? That is a much cuter name than the German kartoffel. The only German noun I remember from my high school class. Of course it had to be food!
I made krumpli for us this morning. Very good. I cubed them
last night, rinsed well and set them in water, in the fridge.
Made breakfast meal making much quicker for those busy
morning rushes. For Tim more than me, as I’m hanging
out and clipping coupons for market.
Hope you have a groovy day.
We tried these and had similar results. Extremely undercooked, and no where near as good as fries!
Exactly Shannon!
I’m fascinated to hear the alternatives that could make these work because, man, total epic fail at our house too! And it sucked because we were SO looking forward to them. I’m glad you posted this on Pinterest too so other people won’t be so disappointed!
Such a shame, isn’t it Jamie? It’s hard when you’re counting on a dish and so many people seem to love it but when you try… Thanks, you know me, gotta spread the truth!