Well, it made for an interesting thread, anyway! I eat a lot of potatoes, this might have happened to me one day save for learning about it now. The coffee thing sounds horrid, yet adorable.
I just gotta ask, from where did the concept of quitting after 35mins come into play? I can’t think of anything that would have stopped me from forging on to 45, 55, 65, and so on. With the hardheaded ness of a mule! I can only aspire to the maturity you’ve shown in knowing when to call it off. I’d still be going back and checking an hour or more later, and it would have become my mission, perhaps even a vendetta of sorts. Nicely done!
I stopped at 45 minutes when I realized they weren’t any more par-boiled than they had been 20 minutes earlier. (And I use 20-25 minutes as my rule of thumb for making mashed potatoes) Plus we were all starving, and it was getting late. I thought… ooh they are boiled enough for homefries.
And… no. My husband gamely chewed through a few, and so did I. My nine year old took one bite and said “If I eat extra vegetables can I skip the potatoes?”.
We ALL decided to eat extra veggies.
I’ve had this happen! I didn’t know why, of course–I thought it was because I put the raw potatoes directly into a tomatoey broth to cook instead of precooking them. They finally cooked enough to be edible, but they stayed chunky and chewy, with an outer layer that didn’t soften up. Iiiiinteresting.