The almost-lost art of rosin potatoes

Absolute best baked (what some people mistakenly call roast) potatoes I&#x27;ve ever had were in a small restaurant in Cornwall, England.<p>They were almost definitely locally grown, doubtless extremely fresh, and almost definitely an heirloom variety. (And I acknowledge that food always tastes better when you&#x27;re on holiday.)<p>We were told the preparation was pretty simple: &#x27;boil in a strong stock until almost fully cooked, then dry and coat in goose fat, and then bake until they look good&#x27;.<p>(Apart from being much faster than conventional baked potatoes, and much much faster &amp; safer than this rosin preparation, there&#x27;s little risk of getting sick from this method.)

Hmm nothing in this article explains the effect the rosin is supposed to have?<p>&quot;This is the best way to cook potatoes. Everything about it is difficult and dangerous. You have to try it!&quot;

I use rosin regularly as flux for soldering. Cooking a potato in it doesn&#x27;t sound appetising, especially after the warning to not eat the skin, as the skin is not impermeable either.<p>That said, the Wikipedia page for rosin says it is &quot;an FDA approved food additive&quot;.

It sounds like most commenters here have never had a rosin tater. When I was kid, a very popular, upscale restaurant called Planters Back Porch in seafood mecca Murrells Inlet, SC specialized in rosin taters. They were very good, enough for there to always be long lines to get in.<p>In case it’s not clear from the description, after removing the potato from the rosin, and wrapping in paper, the thin layer of remaining rosin quickly solidifies into a hard shell, so you can then cut through it to get access to the flesh of the potato without accidentally eating rosin.

A truly exhaustive history lesson: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;bittersoutherner.com&#x2F;feature&#x2F;2022&#x2F;the-elusive-roots-of-rosin-potatoes" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;bittersoutherner.com&#x2F;feature&#x2F;2022&#x2F;the-elusive-roots-...</a><p>This was linked by Gemini, which happily chirped that rosin potatoes can be great!

I&#x27;ve spent time reading some old baking books and looking at recipes, thinking I would discover some amazing technique, ingredient, or recipe that would be a game changer. What I discovered was that baking 50 to 200 years ago was primitive and offers very little other than some interesting history. Modern baking ingredients, techniques, and equipment are at such a higher level that there is little usefulness found in these old publications.<p>I would imagine the same is true for cooking. Our ingredients, equipment (such as temperature control), and techniques are so much better than these old ways of doing things, they just can&#x27;t compare when it comes to taste and quality. Cooking and baking are sciences that have come a long way and are remarkably better than they have ever been. There is no reason to cook with poisons or questionable practices just for nostalgia&#x27;s sake.

It seems that the boiling point and flash point of rosin is quite high, somewhere close to 390 degrees Fahrenheit. So, transferring the heat directly into potato probably has some positive effect on cooking, but I would think cooking potatoes at that temperature in high temp cooking oil would produce a similar effect without toxicity. Giving up reusability seems like a good tradeoff.

My wife and I like to microwave potatoes. We call them &quot;sexy microwave potatoes&quot; after the Reddit story that brought us this idea: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;AmItheAsshole&#x2F;comments&#x2F;jdnt43&#x2F;aita_for_eating_sexy_potatoes&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;AmItheAsshole&#x2F;comments&#x2F;jdnt43&#x2F;aita_...</a>

&quot;Hey Jim, try this potato, it&#x27;s cooked in the waste products of distilled turpentine. Don&#x27;t eat the skin.&quot;<p>Jim: &quot;No thanks.&quot;

I wonder if similar results could be had by cooking the potato in clay or a salt crust.

if you break the skin, you cannot eat that potato<p>Be careful out there

None of this makes any sense at all. This sounds like it belongs in the same category as gold-plated HDMI connectors improving your TV&#x27;s image quality.<p>Some comments suggest it&#x27;s because it&#x27;s cooked at a higher temperature than boiling. That doesn&#x27;t matter because the inside of the potato obviously never goes above boiling, since it continues to have lots of water inside after being cooked. The same exact effect should be achievable simply with deep-frying the potato at the same temperature.<p>Other comments suggest something somehow preserves the potato&#x27;s flavor more than other methods. But that&#x27;s not how cooking&#x2F;flavor works. If the rosin (or boiling water or frying oil) were seeping into the inside of a potato then sure any or all of them could be leaching out flavor compounds, or reacting with existing compounds... but they&#x27;re not.<p>All this is doing is heating the inside of the potato, where literally the only variables are the amount of heat being applied and the moisture escaping at the surface. If you were eating the <i>skin</i> then yes there&#x27;s a massive difference between boiling vs. frying vs. roasting. But not on the <i>inside</i> (except for how much water vapor escapes which is a question of temperature and wrapping). And this article is literally about eating only the inside of the potato, since the rosin itself is apparently not fit for consumption.<p>Best I can guess, this is just a novelty thing about eating potatoes encased in newspaper that has wound up essentially glued to a hard potato shell? Seems like it&#x27;s more about the experience, and nothing whatsoever to do with flavor or taste.

I&#x27;m someone who loves doing weird culinary things, and has, in the past, gone to relatively extreme amounts of effort to make something at home rather than buying it (or at least...to try making it at home). I am probably in the top 1% or more of people willing to expend time and effort on weird food things.<p>And yet even for me, spending 1.5-2 hours to get 3 baked potatoes, which are supposedly just....really nicely baked potatoes?...seems like a lot.<p>I&#x27;m glad that there are people out there preserving weird old historical cooking methods, but I feel no compulsion at all to actually try this myself.

If you&#x27;re a slave in antebellum North Carolina, you have rosin on-hand and an open fire, no oven. You can cook your potatoes on the hot coals and ash or boil them in water in a pot. This method might have been more thermally efficient than either of those options and resulted in a nicer inner texture, while also conveniently sealing the cooked potato in a waxy later so it could be consumed later.

Note that rosin is very flammable, but I guess so is cooking oil.

I wonder if baking in fine sand or salt would have a similar effect with less risk. Or perhaps wrapping in aluminum foil before putting the potato in the rosin pot.

I wonder how that tastes. In Argentina, it’s common to put potatoes directly inside and on top of the charcoal on a parrilla. Jump to 5:30 here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;kpp_AzckMiA?si=6tlhwi7V6v6-T0W7" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;kpp_AzckMiA?si=6tlhwi7V6v6-T0W7</a>.

Well, now I’m curious if other things often called rosins can be used the same way. Would cannabis rosin extracted by the solventless method work? It’s edible so probably not dangerous to eat like turpentine rosin.<p>Can I make cannabis rosin potatoes for danksgiving?

Shouldn&#x27;t these be boiled potatoes and not baked? Would this taste much different from a potato cooked in oil but not deep fried (confit)?

&gt; you can not eat the skin<p>But the skin is the best part! Seems lika a stupid cooking method.

This is interesting history, but I am skeptical that this is safe to eat, or better than a regular potato. If people are interested in trying unusual potato cooking methods, I&#x27;d recommend making Syracuse Salt Potatoes instead- they are excellent and easy.

Personally this cooking method in the link to me is disgusting. Ive settled on my favorite way to cook potatoes - microwave. They get the gentle cook of a boil without the water soluble nutrient loss. Sometimes I let them chill overnight in the fridge then give them a gentle reheat before eating to decrease glycemic load and increase resistant starch. This makes them a lot more filling to me. I eat the skin always.

they pushed amazon affiliate link, but it is not formed well.

This is so dumb, I can hardly believe that it is real. I would need to talk to someone who had experienced it firsthand to fully believe.<p>Water (stew) is... in every aspect possible a superior cooking medium.<p>How could this ever have been economical? How hard is it to make a cooking fire, or share a rosin melting fire with a cook pot?<p>I think it&#x27;s essentially an old sarcastic joke, that people took too literally?