What Can I Cook With Potatoes? 9 Dishes From Curry to Stuffed Paratha

Potatoes go with almost everything

Look at the ingredient lists in a South Asian recipe collection and potatoes keep turning up: with cauliflower, with spinach, with eggs, with mince, with mutton, even inside bread. They are cheap, they keep for weeks, and they make a small amount of other food stretch to feed a family.

Here are nine ways to cook them from our recipe library. Quantities are in metric and US units, as on the recipe pages.

Vegetarian weeknights

Aloo gobi. 400 g (0.9 lb) potato and 400 g (0.9 lb) cauliflower, with an onion, a tomato, ginger, garlic and turmeric. It is cooked covered on low heat, and our tip is not to add extra water, because the vegetables release enough. Leave the lid off for the last few minutes for a slightly roasted flavour. 40 minutes, Easy.

Aloo palak. 350 g (0.8 lb) potato and 400 g (0.9 lb) spinach. The potato cooks covered until half done, then the spinach goes in for about 8 minutes. Mash a few pieces of potato lightly into the gravy to thicken it. 40 minutes, Easy.

Dum aloo. The one to make for guests. 500 g (1.1 lb) of baby potatoes are boiled, peeled, pricked with a fork and shallow-fried until blistered, then cooked on the lowest heat in a gravy of 200 g (0.8 cup) yogurt, ground fennel and Kashmiri chilli. Whisk the yogurt until it is perfectly smooth and keep stirring when it goes in, as lumps make the gravy more likely to split. 50 minutes, Medium.

Aloo bhorta. The simplest dish on the list. Four potatoes boiled in their skins, peeled and mashed while still hot, then mixed with onion, green chilli, coriander and 2 tablespoons of mustard oil, and served at room temperature with dal and rice. 25 minutes. Mash it hot. Cold potato goes gluey.

With eggs or meat

Aloo anday. Potato and egg curry for 3. 300 g (0.65 lb) potato, 4 boiled eggs, an onion and 2 tomatoes. 35 minutes. Do not overboil the eggs, because the yolk turns grey-green at the edge.

Aloo keema. 500 g (1.1 lb) of mince with 300 g (0.65 lb) of potato. The potato goes in a little later than usual, so it does not turn mushy, and the gravy is dried down for the last 2 to 3 minutes. 50 minutes, Medium.

Aloo gosht. Mutton and potato curry. The meat needs about 50 minutes covered (20 to 25 in a pressure cooker), then 300 g (0.7 lb) of potatoes in large chunks for 15 to 20 minutes. Adding them only when the meat is nearly tender keeps them whole. About 1 hour 45 minutes.

Bread and street food

Aloo paratha. 400 g (0.9 lb) of boiled potato mashed with green chilli and coriander, stuffed into 300 g (2.5 cups) of wheat-flour dough. Let the mash cool slightly first, so the dough does not go soggy, and rub oil on your hands when rolling to stop the filling tearing through. 40 minutes, Medium.

Vada pav. Mashed potato tempered with mustard seed, curry leaves and ginger, rolled into balls, dipped in gram flour batter and deep-fried for about 5 minutes. Served in a bun with chutney. 40 minutes, Easy.

Keeping potatoes

• Store them cool, dark and dry, and out of the plastic bag they came in. Light causes greening and warmth causes sprouting.
• A cool, dark cupboard is still the usual choice. Cold storage turns some starch to sugar, which makes potatoes brown faster when fried or roasted. The UK Food Standards Agency used to say never to refrigerate raw potatoes. Since 2023 it says home fridge storage does not meaningfully raise acrylamide, so either place is acceptable. Whichever you pick, roast and fry to golden rather than dark brown.
• Green or sprouted potatoes. Green skin and sprouts contain natural toxins called glycoalkaloids, and cooking does not remove them. Peel and cut away green patches and sprouts generously. If the potato is very green, or tastes bitter, throw it away.
• Wash just before cooking, not before storing.

Cooked potatoes and leftovers

• Refrigerate cooked potato dishes within 2 hours and eat within three to four days.
• Reheat until steaming hot throughout. Mashed potato and curries both reheat well with a splash of water.
• Boiled potatoes can be fried the next day. For our dum aloo recipe, you can boil and fry the potatoes a day ahead and finish the gravy later.
• Freezing: curry freezes fine. Plain boiled potato can go soft and watery when thawed, so freeze potatoes only inside a gravy.

Swaps

• Baby potatoes for dum aloo. The recipe calls for them. Large potatoes cut into chunks will cook, but the pricked, blistered skins are part of the dish.
• Waxy or floury? We have not specified a variety. Waxy potatoes hold their shape better in curries. Floury ones break down, which is useful if you want a thicker gravy.
• No cauliflower for aloo gobi? Try the aloo palak method, or add any seasonal vegetable the way our vegetable pulao recipe does.

Cook it with Degchi

Mark potatoes, an onion and a tomato in your Degchi pantry, and the app lists the dishes you can make now. Each recipe page shows Have or Out for every ingredient, and the servings scaler adjusts the amounts. The app is free and in closed beta; join the beta if you would like to try it.

Questions

Can I eat sprouted potatoes? If the potato is still firm, cut off the sprouts and any green areas generously. If it is soft and shrivelled, very green or bitter, discard it.

Why do my potatoes turn to mush in curry? Usually they went in too early or were cut too small. Add them to the pot only when the other ingredients are part-cooked, as in our aloo keema and aloo gosht recipes.

How many potatoes make 4 servings? Our curries use 300 to 500 g (0.65 to 1.1 lb) in total, which is about 2 to 4 medium potatoes depending on the dish.

Should I peel them? For bhorta, you boil them in their skins and peel while still warm. For curries such as aloo keema, our recipe calls for peeled and cubed potato.