Potato

While this meat-and-potatoes combo cooks, prepare a green vegetable and one of our speedy desserts.

Top oven fries with the works—tender beef, broccoli, brown gravy, and a bit of blue cheese. You can use leftover roast beef, such as part of the extra Tuscan Braised Beef (page 172), or buy the lowest-fat, lowest-sodium cooked beef you can find.

Today’s low-fat sausages make it easy to enjoy heart-healthy versions of some Eastern European dishes, such as this one.

Here’s a warm version of the popular French salade niçoise. Très bien!

Serve this attractive side dish with your holiday meal or with roast beef for Sunday dinner. Baking at a high temperature slightly caramelizes the bottom of the squash for a delightful taste.

One kind of roasted potato is good, and two kinds are doubly delicious. This recipe is twice as good in another way, too: You get roasted potatoes for today and a start on German or Mexican Potato Salad (pages 80, 81) for later.

Make this creamy potato salad wild or mild, depending on your family’s preference. Starting with already-cooked Roasted Red and White Potatoes (page 278) cuts your time in the kitchen to almost nothing!

Making potato salad is a great way to use leftover Roasted Red and White Potatoes (page 278). This version uses caraway seeds and hot mustard for a German slant.

After The Biggest Loser Season 6 finale, I went to dinner at a steakhouse with some of the contestants and Alison Sweeney’s husband, Dave. We were all, of course, trying to order healthy, but it was definitely a challenge. I wound up getting a grilled chicken breast with salsa and “potato smashers.” I was expecting lumpy mashed potatoes. Instead, I was served something similar to this yummy potato . . . only it was doused in more butter than all of us combined had probably eaten in years. But it was so simple, and even tastier with just a small amount of light butter, that I knew I had to include it here.

Most mashed potatoes are full of butter, cream, and other added fats. But this dish pairs wing sauce with blue cheese, packing tons of flavor and thus eliminating the need for added fats or butter.

If you can’t find 6-ounce potatoes or don’t have them on hand, you can simply use one 12-ounce potato. Add 1 minute to the microwave cook time if the potato isn’t tender after the 5 to 6 minutes, or an additional 10 to 15 minutes in the oven, and use all of the butter and brown sugar for the one large potato. A 12-ounce potato will make two servings, so the recommendation is to eat only half.

Potatoes have gotten a bad rap in recent years, but the hype is just that—hype. A 5-ounce potato with skin has only 110 calories and more potassium than a medium banana. It also contains 45 percent of the daily recommended value of vitamin C and is a significant source of dietary fiber. It’s the toppings that are the problem, not the potatoes themselves. If you don’t love steak fries as much as I do, feel free to make your fries any size—just be sure to watch them carefully, as the cooking time will vary.

I was at a restaurant while on the road for an appearance when I glanced at a menu and saw “Old Bay Potato Wedges.” Though the idea seemed perfect, I knew they’d be fried. So instead of ordering them, I immediately texted Stephanie, my Test Kitchen Goddess, and told her we needed to make them. Within days, we created our version, which makes me way happier and more satisfied than any fried version ever could.

I love using tiny potatoes and baby carrots, which makes this recipe insanely easy. That said, sometimes tiny potatoes cost a minor fortune. If that’s the case, save money by using larger boiling potatoes. You’ll have to spend time cutting them into cubes, but it might make sense. You don’t have to use the nonstick foil here if you have a really good nonstick roasting pan, but it makes cleanup almost nonexistent, so I swear by it.

These potato chips are shockingly fresh and tasty right from the microwave, and they’re healthier than almost any chips on the market. Plus, they’re likely to save you a lot of cash since baked chips tend to be quite expensive, yet large bags of fresh potatoes are not.

Pat: Don’t even think about servin’ me fried eggs and toast unless they come with a side of crispy, golden hash browns. We make ours with salty browned smoked ham. I’ve been making them this way for years. My girls love ’em, and if my girls love ’em you know they’re good. Sometimes I’ll use a food processor to shred the potatoes coarsely; other times I’ll cube them and fry them up until they are golden brown and crispy. And if I really want to go overboard, sometimes I’ll top each serving with a slice of American cheese.