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One of the easiest foods to fix is fried potatoes. As a child growing up in the Deep South, one learned to be quick when fixing a meal over a hot stove. Get that grease good and hot! Whatever was going in that hot grease would not take long to cook. Now, if one could afford air conditioning, one did not have to deal with sweat pouring from one’s forehead.
I remember Mother doing her best to cook on those hot evenings. She would have all the windows opened and several fans turned on. But, it did not make any difference. Hot was hot! The fans only seemed to stir more hot air around the various rooms in our house.
If Mother knew that eating fried potatoes might give one cancer, she would have found an alternative solution. After all, Mother was a well-read individual.
Soaking potatoes in water before frying cuts down on the formation of the suspected carcinogen, ‘acrylamide,’ says a new British study.
According to team leader Rachel Burch, of Leatherhead Food International, there has been much research done by the food industry on ways to reduce acrylamide in processed foods, but less so on foods cooked at home.
“We wanted to explore ways of reducing the level of acrylamide in home cooking,” she said.
Acrylamide is created when starch-rich foods are cooked at high temperatures, through frying, baking, grilling, or roasting, according to background information in the study. Some research has suggested that acrylamide, which is found in a wide range of foods, may be harmful to health and may cause cancer in animals.
Researchers found that simply soaking potatoes in water before frying could significantly reduce the formation of acrylamide and any health risks it may pose.
The researchers tried three different approaches. They washed raw French fries, soaked them for 30 minutes, and soaked them for two hours. This reduced acrylamide levels by up to 23%, 38%, and 48%, respectively, when the fries were cooked to a light color.
It’s not clear whether the same reductions could be achieved if French fries are cooked to a deep, dark brown, the researchers said.
The study was published in the Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture.
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