Food experiments: Mad Men (cont.), green beans and mashed potatoes

While green beans and mashed potatoes certainly don't fit with my dessert experiments theme for the month, I learned some great information in my Mad Men class that I'd like to share. In particular, some tips for great mashed potatoes and an incredibly easy recipe for the best green beans I've ever eaten (and thankfully, it has nothing to do with green bean casserole!). I really do want to give credit where it's due, and thank Kevin Ryan for a great class and a lot of knowledge.

I always thought that mashed potatoes were a pretty simple, self explanatory food. Cook potatoes, smash them up and add various unhealthy things for flavor. When you add science (as I suppose you can't help doing if you have a Ph.D. in food science), it becomes a lot more complicated and a lot tastier. The tips I learned:

• Potatoes are usually overcooked (at least mine are!); they are done if you can stick a knife in the potato, lift it up and it slowly slides off. If you can't lift it up well, it's definitely overcooked.
• When the potatoes are done boiling, put them back in the dry pan over heat for a short time to dry out the water. This will give you a richer flavor, since it won't be watered down by the residual moisture.
• Never mash potatoes in a food processor--it breaks down the starches and turns them into the texture of wallpaper paste. (I've never done this, but I'm sure at some point in my life I would have been tempted. Disaster averted.)
• Add all your liquids and most of your seasonings to the potatoes BEFORE you add the butter. The butter coats the potatoes so thoroughly that they won't be able to absorb the rest of the ingredients. You can still add ingredients after the butter if you don't want them absorbed by the potatoes--sort of the equivalent of salting food that's already finished as opposed to salting food and then cooking it. Adding the seasonings after the butter is going to add it on top of a finished product.

The green beans recipe is remarkably simple--I don't know why I haven't tried this or how it turned out so good, but it did. This can also be used on most other vegetables.

Roasted Green Beans
These are seriously amazing. This recipe serves about 8.

Ingredients
2 lbs green beans, ends trimmed off
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon sugar (optional)--this speeds up the roasting process, but you won't taste it. It's optional here, but he highly recommended using it if you make broccoli in this way.

Directions

1. Adjust the oven rack to the middle position and preheat the oven to 450.
2. Line a rimmed baking sheet with aluminum foil (for easy cleanup) and spread the beans on the baking sheet.
3. Drizzle with oil, and toss them to coat. Sprinkle with 1/2 teaspoon of salt and sugar if used, and toss to coat.
4. Spread the beans evenly on the baking sheet. Give them some room and don't let them touch, or the beans will steam rather than roast.
5. Put in the oven and roast 10 minutes.
6. Pull the baking sheet from the oven and use tongs to redistribute the beans. Put them back in the oven and continue roasting until the beans are browning in spots and have started to shrivel, 10 to 12 minutes longer.
7. Add any additional salt and pepper as desired, and serve.