Recipe & Video Potato Fingers

murphyscreek

Veteran
Joined
11 Feb 2019
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11:47 PM
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1,099
Location
Australia
33163

Ingredients

4 large peeled potatoes
2/3 cup polenta (precooked dry polenta)
4 large green cayenne chillies chopped
1 cup fresh coriander (cilantro) chopped
Oil for deep frying

Method

Boil potatoes and when cooked dry and mash roughly with a fork. Add cooked polenta, chillies, and coriander and mix thoroughly. Grab smallish balls of potato mixture and roll in to fat finger shapes. Deep fry fingers in batches, draining on kitchen paper, and serve hot with sauce/seasoning of choice.

I adapted this recipe after watching a video on one of my favourite YouTube channels called "Grandpa Kitchen". Some of you might of seen their videos as they have millions of subscribers and views. If you haven't, basically it's high quality food imagery featuring an Indian Grandpa and a few assistants cooking delicious food, but the twist being they cook it in bulk, and all outdoors on open fires with basic equipment complete with rustic surroundings sometimes with roosters and such walking through the shots. But don't let the surrounds fool, the photography (especially the close ups of the food) and production values are top shelf. At the end of each cook you get to see the kids in the local orphanage feasting on the end result. Only after Grandpa has tasted the dish first to give his approval.

Anyway, my video has none of those production values but will include it just in case the above instructions need clarifying. And full disclosure, a small amount of these fell apart during the frying, but were still edible and tasty but not so visually pleasing and didn't make the photo shoot.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aohnk1cKR6E
 
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View attachment 33163
Ingredients

4 large peeled potatoes
2/3 cup polenta
4 large green cayenne chillies chopped
1 cup fresh coriander (cilantro) chopped
Oil for deep frying

Method

Boil potatoes and when cooked dry and mash roughly with a fork. Add cooked polenta, chillies, and coriander and mix thoroughly. Grab smallish balls of potato mixture and roll in to fat finger shapes. Deep fry fingers in batches, draining on kitchen paper, and serve hot with sauce/seasoning of choice.

I adapted this recipe after watching a video on one of my favourite YouTube channels called "Grandpa Kitchen". Some of you might of seen their videos as they have millions of subscribers and views. If you haven't, basically it's high quality food imagery featuring an Indian Grandpa and a few assistants cooking delicious food, but the twist being they cook it in bulk, and all outdoors on open fires with basic equipment complete with rustic surroundings sometimes with roosters and such walking through the shots. But don't let the surrounds fool, the photography (especially the close ups of the food) and production values are top shelf. At the end of each cook you get to see the kids in the local orphanage feasting on the end result. Only after Grandpa has tasted the dish first to give his approval.

Anyway, my video has none of those production values but will include it just in case the above instructions need clarifying. And full disclosure, a small amount of these fell apart during the frying, but were still edible and tasty but not so visually pleasing and didn't make the photo shoot.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aohnk1cKR6E

Thanks, I'm doing these. Sound yummy.

Russ
 
This link below should work. Just a heads up, the last few videos posted Grandpa has been missing as he's been unwell. But there are 100's prior to that with him. He is reportedly on the mend.

Grandpa Kitchen

Got some polenta an hour ago, I'm making this real soon!!! It will be the first time using polenta as well.

Russ
 
These look wonderful. I love the fact that they are automatically dairy-free (my allergy to dairy makes life interesting) and I can easily see these finding their way onto my plate one of these days that hubby is away from home.
 
View attachment 33163
Ingredients

4 large peeled potatoes
2/3 cup polenta
4 large green cayenne chillies chopped
1 cup fresh coriander (cilantro) chopped
Oil for deep frying

Method

Boil potatoes and when cooked dry and mash roughly with a fork. Add cooked polenta, chillies, and coriander and mix thoroughly. Grab smallish balls of potato mixture and roll in to fat finger shapes. Deep fry fingers in batches, draining on kitchen paper, and serve hot with sauce/seasoning of choice.

I adapted this recipe after watching a video on one of my favourite YouTube channels called "Grandpa Kitchen". Some of you might of seen their videos as they have millions of subscribers and views. If you haven't, basically it's high quality food imagery featuring an Indian Grandpa and a few assistants cooking delicious food, but the twist being they cook it in bulk, and all outdoors on open fires with basic equipment complete with rustic surroundings sometimes with roosters and such walking through the shots. But don't let the surrounds fool, the photography (especially the close ups of the food) and production values are top shelf. At the end of each cook you get to see the kids in the local orphanage feasting on the end result. Only after Grandpa has tasted the dish first to give his approval.

Anyway, my video has none of those production values but will include it just in case the above instructions need clarifying. And full disclosure, a small amount of these fell apart during the frying, but were still edible and tasty but not so visually pleasing and didn't make the photo shoot.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aohnk1cKR6E

Complete fail, I couldn't get how it didn't have a binder to hold it together. I made exactly as recipe, when frying it just fell apart.
Part l l Tried rolling in flour then frying, fail.
Part lll. Rolled in flour and dredged then fried. Success was ok. No colour like the one above, pale colour. Wouldn't try it again. Taste was there but something went wrong. Terribly wrong!!!

Russ
 
Complete fail, I couldn't get how it didn't have a binder to hold it together. I made exactly as recipe, when frying it just fell apart.
Part l l Tried rolling in flour then frying, fail.
Part lll. Rolled in flour and dredged then fried. Success was ok. No colour like the one above, pale colour. Wouldn't try it again. Taste was there but something went wrong. Terribly wrong!!!

Russ
Did you cook your polenta or use it as is in flour/ fine grains form? Whilst the ingredients doesn't make it clear, the instructions say add the cooked polenta. Cooked polenta should bind it together.
 
Sorry to hear that rascal. I probably should have made it clear that the polenta is definitely cooked first, but to a dryer and not a sloppy consistency. And I didn't over mash the potato too much. If you catch up with the Grandpa Kitchen version, they mash the spuds just by sqeezing them with their hands.

View: https://youtu.be/T-5MGRKXwvg
Watching the above again, and they use semolina and not polenta like I did. As I said in the original post, a couple of mine did fall apart too. But most of them stayed intact, though I was aware they were quite delicate and didn't move them around too much whilst frying, especially at first. I don't know if semolina would make them more robust or not.
 
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The recipe said cooked polenta, I cooked as per instructions. It was dry as. I liked it until it came to cook it. Then disaster. Here's two pics , one pre cook and the other after I tried to rescue it by flour and dredge. Tasted ok, but won't try again.

Russ

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I might have figured out the problem. And if this is it, It's very much my bad for not being more clear in the recipe. I used 2/3 cup of polenta, but it was 2/3 of a cup before cooking it. So of course after cooking the polenta, it was much more than 2/3 a cup of polenta being mixed in to the potato. My profuse apologies for not making that more clear.
 
I might have figured out the problem. And if this is it, It's very much my bad for not being more clear in the recipe. I used 2/3 cup of polenta, but it was 2/3 of a cup before cooking it. So of course after cooking the polenta, it was much more than 2/3 a cup of polenta being mixed in to the potato. My profuse apologies for not making that more clear.
If you're sure that's the problem, just edit the original recipe to include something like '(dry volume)' after polenta. It should make things cleared (as well as maybe saying to cook the polenta first and presumably allow it to cool).

If I can I'll try the recipe during the week. But no promises.
 
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I might have figured out the problem. And if this is it, It's very much my bad for not being more clear in the recipe. I used 2/3 cup of polenta, but it was 2/3 of a cup before cooking it. So of course after cooking the polenta, it was much more than 2/3 a cup of polenta being mixed in to the potato. My profuse apologies for not making that more clear.

I would like to try it too - I think this recipe probably depends on having really dry 'stiff' mashed potatoes as well as a thick polenta. Any kind of moisture is going to lead to disintegration of the potato when deep fried.

Looking at the original recipe in the Grandpa video I reckon they are using Cassava root flour (which is often called semolina but is not the same as wheat based semolina). I happen to have some - you simply soak it like you would with instant cous cous.

Of course, if I use that, it won't be testing out your recipe re the polenta!
 
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