Yes, you can use baking potatoes for everything (and no, you don't need waxy ones for salads)

Warm salad with russet potatoes, crispy bacon, various herbs, shallots, garlic, bacon fat and olive oil, chopped green onion, vinegar, wine, mustard, and salt and pepper. Recipe is in Onion: The Essential Cook’s Guide by Brian Glover (2011).

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.

How to Boil Potatoes

It almost seems too simple to ask the question, How do you boil potatoes? But that’s because the real question is How do you avoid mushiness on the one hand or gumminess, on the other?

One large boiled potato in salted water

Well, the answer is in cooking your potatoes in large chunks. I generally cook Idaho or russets, since I prefer them for mashed potato. And if I don’t want a mash, but roasted chips (wedges) or a baked potato instead, these varieties are ideal. I first scrub the taters with a stiff veggie brush under a running tap. I then cut each potato in half, and then cut that down the middle again — so it ends up in quarters. Leaving the skin on, I put them all in a medium or large saucepan, depending on whether I’m cooking one or two. I add salt, about a teaspoon, and cover with water. Bringing the water to a rolling boil, I put a lid slightly askew on top, and reduce the heat to a medium-high setting (usually 7 on my induction hob). I set the timer for a minimum of 13 minutes, though 15 is usually not too much. When they are confirmed done with a knife poked into the middle of a chunk, I drained them and allow them to cool. The skin can then be peeled off quite easily (and I feed the skins to my dog!). They will already be peeling at the edges, usually, especially if they’re rather thick.

Potatoes cooked this way are perfect for mashing: neither gummy nor too soft. Regarding cooking time, my advice is err on the side of longer and softer rather than shorter (and harder). As long as you drain the potatoes more or less immediately, they won’t end up watery. But it’s not pleasant when you begin mashing only to find that you have some not-quite-done hard chunks in the mix. If you do find that, the best remedy is to take those pieces out and microwave them briefly until they match the softness of the rest. And another tip: even though you will have washed and scrubbed the potatoes before they went in, it’s a good idea to swish a bit of water and a paper towel around the pot, just to remove any grit or residue before replacing the cooked potatoes in the pot and doing the mash.