Absolute best baked (what some people mistakenly call roast) potatoes I've ever had were in a small restaurant in Cornwall, England.
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're on holiday.)
We were told the preparation was pretty simple: 'boil in a strong stock until almost fully cooked, then dry and coat in goose fat, and then bake until they look good'.
(Apart from being much faster than conventional baked potatoes, and much much faster & safer than this rosin preparation, there's little risk of getting sick from this method.)
It's not even specific to potatoes. "Bake" and "roast" are distinct culinary jargon terms. Quoth ChatGPT:
> Baking occurs at a moderate temperature, and is generally used to cook and solidify foods without browning them excessively. This technique creates a consistent, even texture throughout the food.
> Roasting, meanwhile, uses a higher temperature, and focuses on achieving a crispy, browned exterior with a tender interior, enhancing flavors through caramelization and the Maillard reaction.
Anything you put in an oven covered completely in aluminum foil —like a baked potato — is only going to end up baked, not roasted.
> Anything you put in an oven covered completely in aluminum foil —like a baked potato — is only going to end up baked, not roasted.
Actually, this produces a steamed potato. Covering it in foil is a poor technique for this reason. To properly do this: wash the potato, stab the skin a few times with a fork (failure to do this may produce an exploded potato), sprinkle with salt while still damp so the salt adheres, then roast directly on the oven rack (or in a barbecue) until squeezing it gives a fair bit of give.
Sometimes I'll reheat some puff pastry wrapped items on a metal pizza tray (one of the ones with regular series of holes punched in it) as it helps with the keeping a crispier texture on the base.
This doesn't mean that my chicken and mushroom puffy has transubstantiated into pizza.
Similarly, cooking potatoes in what you call a roasting tin, or calling the meal a Sunday roast, isn't the definition of roasting any more than it's the definition of Sunday.
The distinction I draw is that roasting involves fire, baking does not.
The rest of the responses in this thread variously assert that the distinction:
- depends on temperature - there's a threshold above which you are now roasting not baking. This probably has roots in the cook by open flame / fire etymology, given that's usually warmer and harder to control accurately. (I will occasionally do a slow cook 'the next day' in my pizza oven using residual heat, and resurrect a small fire for the final smoking & crisping stage - though I am delighted to report that I have never pondered whether I'm then serving baked or roasted food.)
- depends on whether you peel your potatoes, which I'm struggling to reconcile given a) how does this distinction apply for non-potato and/or non-peelable foods, and b) if you peeled only half your potato and then cooked the whole thing - do you now possess a frankenstein potato, half roasted, half baked?
- depends whether the potatoes are cut - evidently once they are cut they can no longer be baked, only roasted. This is obviously at odds with the temperature crowd, and might (or might not) contradict the peeling-defines-state crowd too. They can work it out between themselves.
Anyway, I've had cooked potatoes in all kinds of forms, and I'm quite happy if people have their own local definitions for the two adjectives - so long as they're happy that I have mine.
We're not, because you're being pointlessly tedious about it. Things have names, they can't necessarily be logically explained.
Temperature is what I would have said though. Aga for example (long established cast iron range manufacturer) names its ovens like 'simmering oven', 'baking oven', 'roasting oven' on a 3 door, according to their approximate temperature. Roast potatoes would absolutely be produced from the roasting, not baking, oven.
The roast potatoes you ate in Cornwall were definitely cooked above a circa 160-180C baking temperature.
It's not infallible though, I 'bake' bread at 230C (at least outside the casserole).
The main thing is that things have names and the thing called 'baked potato' is not what you ate in Cornwall, it's an entirely different potato thing that also exists.
I think the distinction might come down to basting. If you definitely wouldn't baste the article, then you're baking it, if you do or might baste it, then you're roasting it.
Roast potatoes could easily be basted, baked potatoes definitely wouldn't be, basting bread seems absurd but basting a joint is obvious.
Regardless I think it should be obvious to all that a terminology that assigns the name "baked beef" to a joint done in a conventional oven is totally insane and nonsense.
After tossing peeled, sliced, sections of potato in some fat / oil before putting them in the oven, I wouldn't add further oil to them - does this mean they're not basted, or they are (by the original covering)?
Is beef wellington baked or roasted, by your definition?
You might not personally but you could keep basting them, it wouldn't turn them into a different dish or completely ruin them if you did. Compare with what would happen if you kept basting bread.
I've never cooked beef wellington so I don't really know, but it seems like it's baked and I imagine you're saying it's basted? As far as I can tell it's an egg glaze, which is not basting. Anyway, worst case scenario, my definition has some edge cases or needs nitpicking over the definition of a baste. This is nothing next to your insistence that a Sunday dinner includes baked beef.
I can't imagine basting a beef wellington, because of the pastry wrapper, but that doesn't mean you couldn't, so I was trying to work out what your definition came down to.
It sounds like you're saying that if you think something could be basted, then it's a roast, but if it couldn't, then it's baked.
If that's your intent, then it feels like the can's been kicked down the road to the comparably confusing definition of a 'bastable food', yes?
(To clarify -- this is because I'm assuming, per previous response, that it's not so much if something was actually basted, but whether it should / could be.)
Roast potatoes can't be called baked potatoes because baked potatoes are a well-defined product. The name transcends cooking method - a baked potato made in a microwave is still a baked potato.
> Absolute best baked (what some people mistakenly call roast) potatoes I've ever had were in a small restaurant in Cornwall, England.
> [...]
> We were told the preparation was pretty simple: 'boil in a strong stock until almost fully cooked, then dry and coat in goose fat, and then bake until they look good'.
You had roast potatoes.
I won't tell you how to make Buffalo wings or Chicago pizza.
What I meant was that I find the Chicago style way too thick, heavy, cheesy, slow to cook. It feels like a manifestation of the country's preference for heavy-handedness and excess. This may be an ungracious take.
In any case it looks closer to a pie or lasagna style dish than what most people would consider a pizza. I gather it partly gets its name from the cooking tin that's used, which brings us back to an earlier problem.
Anyway, I naturally lean more towards the Napoli style food as being proper pizza - and I'm sure we can all agree on that being a more faithful, accurate, just generally better interpretation.
A modest volume of high quality toppings, on a thin base that's enjoyed a slow-ferment (I invariably do poolish), enough proper / good cheese to taste but not so much as to clog up, and the whole thing is cooked fast.
IIRC, Napoli definition requires less than 90s to cook, but I struggle with getting to, maintaining, and then handling the necessary temperatures (around 450 degrees) so I usually end up cooking around 370 degrees for closer to 2.5 minutes.
I know. And just like your disregard for well and long established meanings of 'roast potato' and 'baked potato' I've decided to disregard all the words you've used expecting to convey that you don't like Chicago 'pizza', and take them to to mean that you do. Mad, if you ask me, but to each their own - enjoy!
In Britain, baked potatoes are oven-cooked whole, skin on, usually without fat; roast potatoes are peeled, cut into large uniform chunks (halved or quartered depending on the size), parboiled, then oven-cooked in lots of fat.
As an American, we have the same names for the same types of potatoes and cooking methods. I have no idea what OP is on about.
If I ordered a baked potato in a restaurant and did not receive an entire, whole, skin-on potato, optionally sliced open across the top, I would be shocked and would have a negative opinion of the restaurant.
We make roasted potatoes all the time, much like you describe. When we do it at home, we'll frequently use Idaho Gold potatoes that do not need to be peeled, and we'll skip the parboiling step. Plenty of places make this without skipping those steps, and they're delicious, just more labor intensive.
I mean, sure, but there exist some recipes where the inclusion of a thick potato skin is not appropriate, and a russet potato ought be peeled if that is the variety of potato being used. A thin-skinned potato like the idaho gold can sometimes be used in these recipes without peeling.
The russet skin would of course not render the dish inedible, but the final result would be much more different than what the recipe was trying to achieve.
"Need" here means "required to yield desired final product" not "necessary or else you'll die".
That's how my mother used to do it, but I've found that you don't actually need to use "lots of fat" -- you can get good results with much less (just enough oil or goose fat to cover the bottom of the roasting tray), provided you toss the potatoes in it (pre-heated) when putting them in, and turn them a few times during cooking.
The variety of potatoes used is also a critical factor.
We eat almost only almond potatoes. After eating those, there is nothing else that really cuts it any more. Every time we get back to Sweden and finaly can eat almond potatoes again, it's like "Oh, THIS is how it's supposed to taste". If you don't like potatoes, it's because you haven't had these. Just cook them carefully, they become mashed potatoes very easily. Serve as they are, with a piece of butter. I can eat only potatoes the whole week.
Yes, they can be hard to find in southern parts because they are harder to grow in warm climate.
I tend to cheat a little. Parboil until the surface layer is soft, pour into a large colander. Allow to steam off for a while. Toss and turn to get all surfaces properly roughed up, move into a large (steel) bowl. Add 3-4 tablespoons of goose fat, toss and turn again to coat all surfaces.
Move to a sufficiently deep (steel) baking tray, sprinkle with salt, add a couple of sprigs of fresh rosemary on top, and cook until properly roasted. No need to even turn them around.
> The variety of potatoes used is also a critical factor.
You missed the important step after parboiling - you toss the potatoes in the pan used for parboiling, so that the outside gets slightly mashed around the edges; basically just give them all a single smack against the inside of the drained pan.
Btw I never knew a restaurant in Britain use locally grown heirloom varieties of anything without making a big deal about it. Although I suppose in American terms all produce grown in Britain is fairly local. Potato growing tends to be quite regional.
'New potatoes', the thin skinned spring type, usually eaten boiled with the skin on, come first from Jersey (Jersey Royals). Then Cornwall, but more commonly Pembrokeshire (just over the Bristol Channel from Cornwall). The thick skinned general purpose types come later from places with deep stone free soils. I think more of Lincolnshire, although they are grown in pockets all over. I like the ones from the localised sandy soils in mid Shropshire, but I grew up on them so I'm probably biased. Those are the ones I would roast.
I think other responders have suitably highlighted how you did in fact have roast potatoes, but what I'd like to know is how you became so convinced you had baked potatoes in the first place? Could you describe for us what you think roast potatoes and baked potatoes are?
Alas my record keeping back in 2011 was not so good -- I'm quietly confident it would have been in St Mawes, but, as noted, 13+ years back so it's doubtful that the restaurant, chef, or menu remains.
Oh no - the poor place will be inundated with the tech-adjacent insisting on their personal definitions of culinary terms. Sounds like it could be the setup for a modern Monty Python sketch, actually
I suspect it's hardening around the skin of the potato (hence can't eat the skin) and essentially letting the potato steam itself?
Kind of like if you deep-fried it submerged in oil, but with even less ingress, and much less than boiling.
I commented this elsewhere and someone suggested sous vide ought to be very similar then, of course. (Added benefit perhaps: you can eat the skin!) Only difference might be that the rosin can get hotter, more like oil, than boiling water circa 100C.
If you've never done it, deep fried whole potatoes are amazing. It gets creamy in a way that good mashed potatoes do. Just be careful as they can explode like anything else with a lot of water. You want to poke holes in it so the steam can escape.
I will not allow myself to purchase a deep fat fryer because it's not healthy to live exclusively off of fried potatoes and associated toppings.
I guess a similar effect of “steaming potato within its hardened skin” can be reached wrapping potatoes in aluminum and then putting them in a fireplace
I've done that on barbecues & beach bonfire/barbecues - I wouldn't say it's different from an oven baked potato particularly. Not that I know that rosin-cooked is markedly different (to me) either of course.
The potato itself will not go above 100C until the entirety of its water has boiled off, so that’s unlikely to have a meaningful effect. I imagine deep-frying, or a slow confit will have the exact same effect with a lot less danger.
Why? Boiling water won't go above boiling point because it quickly looses energy with freely departing vapor. In a viscous environment energy removal may not be as quick, and thus temperature may rise above 100⁰C.
I have the impression there isn’t anything you can mix with water that would raise the boiling point more than a few degrees. You need pressure to go beyond, which a potato most definitely does not provide. Since the evaporating water becomes the easiest way for energy to escape, the internal temperature is bound by it.
There seems to be a lack of literature regarding the internal temperature of potatoes, to the point that this thread itself is now one of the search results, so unfortunately I could not find further references!
It probably has to do with the boiling point of pine resin. There are probably other less noxious substances that boil in the 300c range that would produce similar results without the risk of fire or poisoning.
I use rosin regularly as flux for soldering. Cooking a potato in it doesn't sound appetising, especially after the warning to not eat the skin, as the skin is not impermeable either.
That said, the Wikipedia page for rosin says it is "an FDA approved food additive".
Hmm. The state of California would probably argue that both the potatoes and the rosin has turned into cancer-generating zombie paste, at temperatures where using rosin for cooking makes sense.
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.
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.
Yes. This comments section is peak HN. A lot of speculation by people with absolutely zero experience or data.
The article is admittedly tare on the _differences in outcome_, over and against more conventional methods, which I think drives a lot of the speculation here, but approached with curiosity, this becomes, "hmm, I wonder what, if any, the benefits might be?" instead of, "you could definitely replicate this with canola and also btw I solder with rosin"
Where did you get that in the (excellent) article linked? I noticed that they mention sealing in the context of pitch and resin’s industrial applications, but I understood the article more to trace the rosin potato thing back to a trendy mid-century extrapolation from potatoes cooked in brewers’ pitch in German-influence regions of Ohio and the northeast… cook-and-eat-right-away throughout.
And I was surprised they served them at Cracker Barrel.
my bad, I actually got it from this youtube video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KFoB5OEtRA), was trying to the find the source for it, and that same article came up when I searched google for "rosin preserves potatoes"
I'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.
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'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's sake.
I came to this same conclusion after reading Harold McGee's "On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen" as well. Prior to modern cooking science, it seems like a lot of recipes involved something akin to a religious ritual that accidentally did something beneficial to your food. Now that we understand what is happening, we can use modern techniques to get much better results.
It might have been that book that talked about untapped potential for better flavors by making certain sauces in a microwave oven. The basic theory (as I recall) was that the microwaves would selectively heat oil droplets suspended in a watery sauce, and this would better extract flavor compounds into the oil while not heating the overall sauce enough to damage flavors.
IIUC, while the water heats faster, it has a lower upper limit (the boiling point), while oil and fat keep getting hotter.
Source: I have ruined a few plastic containers by heating greasy food in the microwave, because the fat easily gets hot enough to melt the plastic. Homemade Bolognese sauce seems particularly dangerous in this regard, because it is both acidic and greasy, and that will absolutely EAT plastic.
P. S. Even if you don't damage the plastic per-se, heating oily food in the microwave in a plastic container isn't a good idea, quite a few nasty compounds will leach into the oil more readily than into water.
I recommend Max Miller's Tasting History series on youtube. He certainly covers some unusual recipes and ingredients that still look interesting. Admittedly, I didn't try much of his recipes.
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.
Not "very long" no. The oil can be cleaned and reused a few times but even with light use a week is pushing it. Places that do a lot of frying are changing oil every other day, possibly even daily at like a fried chicken place.
I think this is going to depend on the quality of the restaurant and any regulations they're subject to... in any case a week of restaurant use is probably equivalent to a person at home reusing the same oil for years
I've never worked in a jurisdiction where the health code covered this. The oil starts smoking at cooking temperatures and foams and doesn't cook right. The food coming out of it looks and tastes and smells bad.
You also can't go years with it at home even with few uses. After you've fried in it once the oxidation goes much faster even if you don't use it again. Maybe if you freeze it between uses but I've never heard of that.
I intentionally used the words "very long" instead of an exact time specifically to avoid pedantic replies along the lines of "no not actually that long but slightly shorter" because my point was that cooking oil, like rosin, is sometimes reused in some contexts and by some people. Please replace "very long" with whatever exact period of time you think is the longest time the shadiest possible restaurant with awful food might let their cooking oil go for.
I'll admit that I pretty much deserve this, because pointing out that cooking oil can also be reused, was itself a pretty pedantic and pointless thing to mention.
I’ve never worked in a restaurant and don’t know how long they keep their oil for. However, I used to engineer commercial biodiesel plants, and am very familiar with exactly how rancid, oxidized, and contaminated with solids used oil from restaurants often is- I’ve seen some truly nasty stuff and don’t eat fried food from restaurants. “food coming out of it looks and tastes and smells bad” is exactly right.
I used to work at McDonald's. The deep fryer oil was filtered and the fryers cleaned every night. You could tell when the oil needed to be changed, it was dark and smokey. 5-7 days was about the limit, we always discarded the oil from at least one fryer every night, and we had 6.
When they switched from beef tallow to vegetable oil, it seemed like they needed to be changed a little more often.
The danger is part of the appeal. When somebody gives you a mushroom called "the sickener," which is apparently edible with an appropriate combination of brining, fermentation, soaking, rinsing, and boiling, it's a little hard to resist the temptation to prove everyone else wrong and turn it into a tasty treat.
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's image quality.
Some comments suggest it's because it's cooked at a higher temperature than boiling. That doesn'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.
Other comments suggest something somehow preserves the potato's flavor more than other methods. But that's not how cooking/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're not.
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 skin then yes there's a massive difference between boiling vs. frying vs. roasting. But not on the inside (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.
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's more about the experience, and nothing whatsoever to do with flavor or taste.
Like you said, the cooking of the inside is a function of the water vapor escape, which is a function of temperature and wrapping.
People elsewhere in this thread have said they have tried both methods, and commented on how when deep frying a whole baked potato, the escaping water vapor causes the oil to visibly, vigorously boil, but this doesn't happen with rosin, suggesting the vapor remains trapped inside.
While liquid water cannot go above 100C, water vapor certainly can. That water remains in the potato after cooking can just be re-condensed vapor. How the expanded gas would remain in the potato I have no idea.
My interpretation is that the difference from deep-frying is that something about the rosin method prevents as much water vapor from escaping. Maybe it's just typical cooking temperatures, and a deep fryer set to the same temperature as the rosin pot would yield a similar result, they just usually aren't set to that temperature.
Probably the rosin is just at a lower temperature. Set oil to 275°F instead of 350°F and you'd achieve the same effect, if that's the case. (As you suggest.)
Or if the rosin is creating some kind of impermeable seal (unlikely since it's liquid at this temperature, but let's suppose it chemically reacts with the skin somehow) then you achieve the same thing by wrapping the potato in aluminum foil. That's the whole reason for foil around baked potatoes at steakhouses.
The point is, the rosin isn't doing anything special you can't already easily do. There's no special flavor here.
I'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.
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.
I'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.
The article linked in another comment offers this by way of justification:
> "Because none of the potato’s flavor or aroma compounds can escape, you get the most intense potato flavor you’ve ever experienced,” Brock says. “And they’re steaming in their own water, which is why you get a totally unique texture."
The article says the potatoes bubble and eventually float to the top as water is released. So surely some other volatile compounds could be released too? Perhaps compounds cannot be dissolved in the rosin as they are in a pot water? But then why is it better than regular baking?
Sous vide would certainly trap everything, but then again, we want a potato that is ultimately dry on the outside.
What if instead of rosin we used something safer and more available, like a cooking oil? I bet deep fried potatoes would taste quite good! :-P
If it's only a slight bubble, then it's much less water escaping than in conventional cooking techniques. Frying potatoes give off so much water it gives the impression of a rolling boil.
In the US, the default potato is the Russet. It has a good flavor and is well suited to high temperature cooking.
I'd be practically certain that is what is intended. It's possible it means a semi waxy white potato, which would be contemporaneous with the historical setting.
It is very unlikely to mean any of the thousands of more exotic varieties.
Been a long time since I've had one, but I still remember that it was the best potato I've ever had. Not sure why. Just really good. And you can't eat the skin.
It was a deep south thing in the US, but even within living memory not very common.
The article mentions pine forests of georgia and north carolina so it seems to be a SE coastal plains thing. Quite different history and culture from what people usually mean by deep south.
Family from southern Alabama. Again, not common, but it existed outside of Georgia and NC. People always looked at me weird when I would talk about it, but certainly a memorable experience.
If you'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.
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: https://youtu.be/kpp_AzckMiA?si=6tlhwi7V6v6-T0W7.
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.
Can I make cannabis rosin potatoes for danksgiving?
I think you'd need industrial quantities for a recipe like this. Maybe you can infuse some animal fat (or vegetable oil) with the cannabis rosin, though, and roast the potatoes in it.
It mentions requiring 2 1-gallon “paint cans” of rosin to start cooking 3 potatoes. While possible, that sounds like a LOT of cannabis rosin to attempt to make or collect, but I’d be happy to help.
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'd recommend making Syracuse Salt Potatoes instead- they are excellent and easy.
Well I agree that there are better alternatives. But is rosin really that toxic? It seems to cause problems if the fumes are inhaled, but I can't find evidence it is particularly dangerous to consume. Similar to lots of other tree resins, which are even used in traditional chewing gum.
I'm not sure about you, but "can't find evidence it is particularly dangerous" is not exactly the standard of evidence I want when deciding to consume something that isn't normally a food item.
I have a tub of oar lubricant, for rowing. I also cannot find any evidence that it would be dangerous to eat, but I'm not going to fry up my dinner in it. Oar lubricant is traditionally just tallow so maybe that's what this is- but since it wasn't ever intended as food, do they, e.g. make sure it isn't stored and processed with equipment containing high lead concentrations, etc.? Maybe this one company adds something special and toxic that makes it work better that they don't have to disclose because it's not for human consumption?
Yes, but is there already some niche folk history of cooking food in oar lubricant? My response was to you saying "I am skeptical that this is safe to eat" when people have been, apparently, safely eating it.
Indeed there is- beef tallow is a common cooking oil and oar lubricant, and the supplier I buy my oar lubricant from does also sell food grade tallow, but it is unclear how or if it differs from the marine grade one
"apparently, safely eating it" is also still not the standard I want to use for food. The guys down at the fishing docks in SF Bay are "apparently safely eating" all kinds of fish and sharks that there are big warning signs posted all over not to eat.
The LD50 is pretty high, so it's not likely to kill you, but I don't think you'd want to eat it. "May cause skin, eye, and respiratory tract irritation"
Their MSDS for sodium chloride says, "Wear personal protective equipment/face protection. Ensure adequate ventilation. Avoid
contact with skin, eyes or clothing. Avoid ingestion and inhalation. Avoid dust." and that, in case of skin contact, you should "Wash off immediately with plenty of water for at least 15 minutes. Get medical attention
immediately if symptoms occur," to avoid which you should "Wear appropriate protective eyeglasses or chemical safety goggles as described by
OSHA's eye and face protection regulations in 29 CFR 1910.133 or European Standard
EN166. Wear appropriate protective gloves and clothing to prevent skin exposure." https://www.fishersci.com/store/msds?partNumber=S64010&produ...
Just to clarify, this is not some potentially contaminated crude rock salt product. It's the USP grade of table salt for incorporation into pharmaceutical products, which the MSDS also recommends against.
There are toxic plants out there, but pine trees are pretty safe. You can safely chew even raw pine resin, even without boiling out the turpentine. You can make tea from pine needles. Try it, it's good.
Frying in rosin is a somewhat risky, even potentially fatal, form of food preparation, but the risk isn't that the rosin is going to poison you. It's that you'll spill hot rosin on yourself and get badly burned.
I guess that with a steaming hot potato the higher risk is to inhale rosin in the steam rather than to eat it. I would much rather use duck fat to roast potatoes.
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.
Water is a solvent, and unless pressurized, liquid water is limited to a maximum temperature of 100C. Many foods cook differently (one may even say better) at higher temperatures, or if parts don't get dissolved into the water. Not defending using a poisonous rosin instead, but just pointing out why we don't all just stew potatoes.
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're on holiday.)
We were told the preparation was pretty simple: 'boil in a strong stock until almost fully cooked, then dry and coat in goose fat, and then bake until they look good'.
(Apart from being much faster than conventional baked potatoes, and much much faster & safer than this rosin preparation, there's little risk of getting sick from this method.)