Need help on preparing a Potato Dish!!??!?

Question

I'm making Potatoes Au gratin from scratch because my family does not like that boxed stuff, so I know the normal cooking time for that dish is anywhere from 50 minutes to an hour, so is there anything I can do to the potato (boil it, microwave it, etc..) so that they will be baked much faster? Thanks!

Answer 1

I can't imagine why parboiling wouldn't work. I do something very similar for what my 7-year-old calls his "favorite potatoes", which involves boiling large-ish chunks of peeled potatoes for no more than 5 minutes, draining them, tossing them with olive oil and salt, then roasting them for a good long time at 425. The only thing I would say is, don't boil them for very long before combining them with your other ingredients and putting them in the oven. The parboiling will make them cook a lot faster than the time given in your recipe (I'd probably start checking them at 30 minutes), and you don't want them overcooking and falling apart. If you keep an eye on them and test with a fork, you'll easily be able to tell when they're done. Betcha anything it will work though. Happy experimenting!

Answer 2

You could boil the potatos first, then peel and slice them. The less time you bake them in the oven though, the thinner the sauce will be. I'd say, in the long run, just doing it from scratch would be your better choice.

Could you make it all a head of time, cooked in the oven, then freeze it? That way, when you got home, you could pop it in the oven, and it wouldn't take as long to cook, since it is already cooked!

Answer 3

You can precook diced potatoes to cut down on the cooktime. Your sauce is premixed and cooked on the stove anyway so you would be adding it to the potatoes and baking for about 15 min. at 400. I still prefer the longer method myself.

Answer 4

You can parboil the potatoes, and make the sauce before hand so you just cook the potatoes and reheat the sauce.

Answer 5

Not really. The milk and flour need time to cook, too.