Does It Really Take 15 Hours To Cook The Viral TikTok Potatoes?

If you're looking for a quick potato snack, well, maybe look elsewhere. There's one viral TikTok recipe that is, without question, a labor of love. With over 100 million views, the hashtag #15hourpotato blew up on the social media platform after many users started recreating the recipe, which takes 15 hours to complete. The video was originally posted in August 2021 by Michelin-trained chef and content creator Poppy O'Toole, author of "Poppy Cooks: The Food You Need" and "Poppy Cooks: The Actually Delicious Air Fryer Cookbook."

But here's the catch: It's actually an easy recipe! Yes, it's true that it'll take a long time to enjoy these potatoes, but the reason why there are millions of people trying their hand at this dish is that it isn't all that challenging. The potatoes cook in the oven for three hours, then stay in the fridge for 10 to 12 hours, which totals 15 hours, according to O'Toole's instructions.

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Why Does It Take 15 Hours To Prepare This Recipe?

The preparation itself doesn't take that long, and involves slicing the potatoes and covering them with beef fat (which can be replaced with vegetable shortening, vegetable stock, or butter, if you'd like to make the recipe vegan or vegetarian-friendly). The spud slivers are layered over and over in a baking tray and cooked in the oven. On TikTok, Poppy O'Toole bakes the potatoes under parchment paper, creating a seal that protects them from burning and a barrier for weighing them down. You can use anything heavy-ish -- larger cans of food work especially well. The heavy items compress the potatoes, helping them stick together. O'Toole cools hers in the fridge overnight or, if you'd like to be a bit more precise, for around 12 hours. Only then is the compressed potato block cut into squares or rectangles -- to make each potato exactly the same size, O'Toole uses a measuring tape — and then deep-fried. It's a snack that could easily be counted among the deep-fried foods you need to try before you die.

The recipe is similar to chef Thomas Keller's potato pavé, which also consists of thin, layered potatoes that are chilled overnight. The importance of the time spent in the fridge is so that the potatoes congeal and keep their form, otherwise, they'd come apart when fried or deep-fried. There are many delicious potato side dish recipes, but the 15-hour potato is certainly one of the best.

What Do TikTok Users Think About The 15-Hour Potato?

Among the millions giving these potatoes a try, actor-entrepreneur Gwyneth Paltrow has tested this recipe and shared on her Instagram Stories that it was "a 10/10." But what are other creators saying about it? One TikToker recreated the dish and followed all the steps advised by Poppy O'Toole, 15 hours of waiting included, and said that it was "well worth a 15-hour wait." And similar to Paltrow, another creator also described the recipe as a 10/10. After trying the potatoes, which usually turn out crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside, a different user of the platform only said, "holy jeeves" — simple and straight to the point.

In the comment section of O'Toole's original video, someone wrote, "I suddenly have 15 hours of free time today." But not everyone seems to share that opinion, and another user lamented, "so upset knowing how bad I want this but knowing I'm too lazy to make it." A different commenter mentioned that they would be curious to see the results of this recipe if prepared with sweet potatoes instead of regular ones -- they even suggested it would be good if dusted with cinnamon and brown sugar.

But not all the feedback has been positive. "I tried this and was not impressed, I was expecting them to taste like heaven and not taste like potatoes," they said. "Waste of time," someone else added. Well, nobody can please everyone, not even crunchy potatoes.

Read the original article on Daily Meal.