How to rice potatoes

Question

I was wondering if anybody know a method to rice potatoes without them turning into mashed potatoes. When I do it to raw potatoes, they mush or just stay too crunchy and with cooked potatoes, just forget about it. What I am looking for is discrete, small bits of potato that will still have a pillowy mouth feel.

One avenue that I haven't tried yet is starting from mashed, but I can't figure out a way to segregate the bits so that they won't reform into mashed potatoes once a fork hits them.

Answer

What an interesting idea. Essentially you're looking to make rice out of potatoes, yes?

I can see a couple of options. You could make potato orzo (a small pasta that looks like rice) I suppose; googling recipes for potato pasta should point you in the right direction.

You could also, I think use the reverse spherification method. Make mash as you normally would, and then put it through a ricer into an alginate bath. This should preserve the individual 'grains'. You will need to have milk and/or cream in the mash to ensure there is enough calcium for the alginate to react with.

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