Knowledge Base > Ken Rubin - Ask Me Anything (Office Hours)

Ask Me Anything (Office Hours)

Ken Rubin - Ask Me Anything (Office Hours)

This event was on Tuesday, December 13, 2022 at 11:00 am Pacific, 2:00 pm Eastern

Join Chef Ken Rubin in his virtual office as he welcomes all of your questions. This event was created for you and we encourage you to Ask Anything – from cooking techniques to cours… Read More.

Recorded

Question:

When I cube red potatoes and saute them in the pan, they stick to the bottom. Adding water just makes them soggy. Is air frying in the oven the only option?

— Roy Doernhofer

Answer:

I'm a big fan of the air frying method. I think for a lot of people. especially people who want that satisfaction of a Christie vegetable something that has texture and that Crunch and also the flavor that comes with the Browning process air fryer makes a lot of sense going back to what I said. previously about you know cooking without the need for additional salt or oil or sugar in a convection oven is that you can actually mimic on a larger scale a lot of what happens in an air fryer just on a sheet pan in a convection oven if you're using the right temperature, so if I'm making no oil. You know country style potatoes or hash browns or some red potatoes that I Cube really small and my goal is to essentially mimic what it would have been like to fry them up in a frying pan. I'll oftentimes just do them on a sheet pan. So my method for that is I'll cut my potatoes, you know, pretty small kind of maybe a quarter inch or something like that cubes. I might give them a coating like I refer to earlier where maybe a little bit of stock or something else just to kind of Give them something X on the exterior to help with flavor and also Browning again not too much liquid because that's going to defeat your goal of having crispiness and then a nice hot oven 425 or even hotter. Good spacing good air flow that's going to be your best bet in terms of finding that balance for you get. Non-stick because the parchment is not going to let anything stick you're getting both conduction from where that one potato pieces on the bottom of the pan. But also all the convection currents surrounding it that's going to be heating it creating that Browning phenomenon. Just another note when you're cooking with that method. Preheating your oven for a good 15 minutes is going to be key to really making sure that your oven temperature is nice and hot and also trying your best not to peek into the oven and open it up and lose that you know, 20 30 50 degrees of temperature. That your oven will then have to recharge your oven really wants to be super nice and hot and don't be you know opening it or peeking inside because that's gonna only limit or diminish the ability for that Browning action to happen or happen more quickly. So hopefully that that works well.
Ken Rubin

Ken Rubin

Chief Operating Officer

rouxbe.com