These Crunchy Potato Pillows Need to Be Added to Your Meal Plan ASAP

When winter temps dip and the weather is less than inviting, it’s hard to beat a potato. In any sort of form. Give us a baked potato with piles of toppings, potatoes with lots of cheese and heavy cream, mashed potatoes … you get the idea. So whenever we stumble upon a new potato recipe, especially this time of year, we stop to take a serious look.

And that’s just what we did when we found this video for Creamy Crunchy Bubble Potato Pillows by @msshiandmrhe. We weren’t the only ones who were intrigued by it: Posted on December 4, the tutorial for making these gooey-centered tot-type treats racked up more than 3 million likes on TikTok to date. 

The stars of the show: two large potatoes that get boiled, skin-on, for 30 minutes. Next, a moment of brilliance. See, she slices a circle around the potatoes before the boiling and, after boiling, the skin just slips off! Brilliant!

If you don’t have a potato ricer in your kitchen arsenal, employ @msshiandmrhe’s technique of using a garlic press to mash the chunks of boiled potato (although it may take a while). Mix the mashed spuds with rice flour, cornstarch, salt, and pepper, then knead into a dough, roll into a tube, and cut them into small pillows. This is when you might do a double take because, while it may seem like you’re making gnocchi, it’s something a little different.

What keeps them from being this Italian pasta alternative is her two-step deep fry method: five minutes over medium heat to reach a light golden brown, then over high heat for 30 seconds for a deeper golden brown. That outer crunch seals in piping hot potato goodness.

She tops her potato pillows with chili powder or ketchup, but anything would work (hello, shredded cheese and a quick pop into the broiler). If you would rather a potato snack with less oil, however, you can always try these air fryer tater tots instead.