I love recipes, wherever they come from — magazines, cookbooks, the Internet. And I like recipes that have a confidence in what they’re doing and why. But what I don’t enjoy so much is the way that we, the reader and home cook, are often shepherded towards certain beliefs and away from certain freedoms for no very good reason. Look no further, for an example of what I mean, than the way we are supposed to view potatoes.

Waxy potatoes are best for salads, we are endlessly told. Why? Do they taste better than baking potatoes? No, not really. But because they are waxy, they supposedly hold together better: they’re not so crumbly. So don’t make your potato salad — of whatever kind — with anything other than a waxy potato.

Well, guess what? I don’t mind waxy potatoes, but they’re not the zenith of potato, in my book. In fact, I find them less desirable than baking potatoes (whether russet or something similar) for the very reason that they are waxy instead of fluffy. And the fact is that I prefer my potatoes on the bready side of the spectrum: crumbly, porous, light, easy to mix with other ingredients. Whether I’m making seafood cakes or mash or jacket potatoes, I like a potato flesh that is airy rather than clay-like. There is no single recipe that I have ever tried that was truly better because the potatoes were of the waxy variety. It stands to reason, I think. If you could dry the clouds in the sky and preserve them, they’d be baked potatoes not waxy boiled ones.

I mention this because I made a warm potato salad this afternoon, from a recipe in a book about onions. It’s a very nice book, with a lot of appealing recipes I’m looking forward to trying. But it asked for waxy potatoes, and I knew straight away I was not going to do that. I prefer the taste, texture, and yes, the relative mouth-meltingness, of typical baking potatoes. I knew that they would hold up well in this salad, and they did (see photo of what was left, after hubby and I eagerly devoured the bulk of it). There was no problem of over-crumbliness: I simply turned the dressing, herbs, and shallot-garlic mix gently and slowly with a spatula, and everything remained intact. And you just can’t beat the flavour.

So the next time you are told to use waxy potatoes, and you either don’t have them or don’t fancy them, use your favourite varieties instead. They are almost guaranteed to give you an equally beautiful, and perhaps tastier, result.