The locals love their Salt Potatoes, and they are on menus in Upstate NY from Albany to Buffalo and from Jamestown to Binghamton.
Why did salt potatoes become popular in update New York? Once covered by the ocean, Syracuse, NY, was once a major salt production center and is still known as the “Salt City.” It has a main drag named Salina Street, and the suburb of Liverpool even has a Salt Museum on the shores of Onondaga Lake, where, until 1920, brine from the salty marshes near the lake was converted to “white gold.”
The recipe for salt potatoes came about in the 1800s when, legend has it, Irish salt miners made lunch by putting potatoes in baskets and lowered them into the kettles of boiling brine. The spuds were then crowned with gobs of butter to cut the salt. Today they are so popular that groceries sell kits to make them — just bags of potatoes with the right amount of salt enclosed.
When I serve these potatoes with ribs, I eat both with my fingers and let the sauce, salt, and butter mix to create the best licking this side of an ice cream cone. These little nuggets are the perfect side dish for countless BBQ and grilling dishes but especially with other Upstate specialties: Cornell Chicken, Binghamton Spiedies, and Buffalo Chicken Wings. Leftovers reheat well in the microwave or fry and grill easily since there is so much butter on them. For a less salty, less buttery, and more grilled and crunchy take on the dish, try my recipe for Modern Grilled Salt Potatoes With Less Salt.
The Original Salt Potatoes Recipe
Makes:
About 2 pounds (907.2 g)Takes:
Ingredients
- 2 quarts water (half gallon)
- 1 pound Morton Coarse Kosher Salt (about 2 cups (456.3 g))
- 2 pounds small waxy potatoes, new potatoes, or fingerlings
- 6 tablespoons unsalted butter (¾ stick)
These recipes were created in US Customary measurements and the conversion to metric is being done by calculations. They should be accurate, but it is possible there could be an error. If you find one, please let us know in the comments at the bottom of the page
Method
- First, read my article on The Science of Potatoes.
- Prep. Wash the potatoes thoroughly, scrubbing them with a scrubby sponge. Make sure you get all the soap out of the sponge first, please. Cut out any bad spots or growing eyes, but leave the skin on and leave them whole.
- Cook. Bring the water to a hard boil. Add the salt and stir until dissolved. Add the taters, being careful not to splash yourself. Boil until a fork slides in and out of a potato with ease, about 20 to 30 minutes.
- Pour the potatoes into a strainer or colander in the sink and drain. Let them sit for a few minutes and they should get a slight frosting of salt. If they are large-ish, you can cut them into smaller chunks at this stage if you wish. Or just leave them whole. Put the hot pot back on the burner and turn it to medium. Add the butter and melt it. Then add the potatoes and stir, coating them with butter.
- Serve. Serve immediately, but they are potatoes, so they'll stay warm for a while.
High quality websites are expensive to run. If you help us, we’ll pay you back bigtime with an ad-free experience and a lot of freebies!
Millions come to AmazingRibs.com every month for high quality tested recipes, tips on technique, science, mythbusting, product reviews, and inspiration. But it is expensive to run a website with more than 2,000 pages and we don’t have a big corporate partner to subsidize us.
Our most important source of sustenance is people who join our Pitmaster Club. But please don’t think of it as a donation. Members get MANY great benefits. We block all third-party ads, we give members free ebooks, magazines, interviews, webinars, more recipes, a monthly sweepstakes with prizes worth up to $2,000, discounts on products, and best of all a community of like-minded cooks free of flame wars. Click below to see all the benefits, take a free 30 day trial, and help keep this site alive.
Post comments and questions below
1) Please try the search box at the top of every page before you ask for help.
2) Try to post your question to the appropriate page.
3) Tell us everything we need to know to help such as the type of cooker and thermometer. Dial thermometers are often off by as much as 50°F so if you are not using a good digital thermometer we probably can’t help you with time and temp questions. Please read this article about thermometers.
4) If you are a member of the Pitmaster Club, your comments login is probably different.
5) Posts with links in them may not appear immediately.
Moderators