
Side dishes · Potato sides
Air fryer smashed potatoes
The crispy-edged internet favourite: boiled gold potatoes flattened and air-fried until the ragged edges shatter. All the crunch of fries with a fraction of the oil.
- Time
- 45 min (10 prep + 35 cook)
- Servings
- 4
- Per serving
- 240 kcal
- Protein
- 5 g
Both directions are legitimate — the score measures fullness per calorie, not virtue. Every version is the same dish, rebalanced.
Ingredients
- 1 3/4 lb baby golds gold potatoes800 g
- 2 tbsp olive oil30 g
- 1 tsp garlic powder3 g
- 1 tsp paprika2 g
- 1 tsp salt5 g
- 3 tbsp grated parmesan (optional)20 g
- to finish fresh parsley, chopped5 g
Every ingredient links to its food page — same data, same score, same formula.
Steps
- Boil the potatoes whole in salted water until completely tender, 15–18 minutes. They must be soft — undercooked potatoes won't smash, they'll crack.
- Drain, let them steam dry, then flatten each to about 1 cm (½ inch) with the bottom of a glass. More ragged surface = more crisp.
- Brush with the oil and season with garlic powder, paprika and salt.
- Air-fry at 200°C for 15–18 minutes until deeply golden and crisp at the edges. Parmesan in the last 3 minutes if using; parsley after.
No air fryer — can I use the oven?
The smash is the technique: a boiled potato is fluffy inside, and every torn edge you create is a future crisp bit. The oven works too — 220°C, a hot sheet pan, same timing.
Why this score
easy to overeatDense calories with little protein, volume or fiber to fill you up.
Three routes to fullness — one is enough
What pulls it down
Nothing here converges the way engineered food does — no sugar, no savoury and no alcohol penalty.
Computed on the finished dish, not an average of the parts: 960 kcal goes into the pot, 865 g of ingredients comes out as ~640 g of food → 150 kcal per 100 g. Cooking moves water, and energy density is the score's biggest lever — so we show the math. Full formula here.
Per
- Calories
- 150
- Protein
- (9%)
- 3 g
- Fat
- (36%)
- 6 g
- Carbohydrates
- (56%)
- 21 g
- of which sugar
- 1 g
- Fiber
- 2 g
- Sodium
- 362 mg
Percentages are the share of calories from each macronutrient.
Computed from the ingredients' USDA data — nothing typed by hand. Every number is traceable, every score recomputable.
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Photo: AI-generated. Nutrition and score are computed from the ingredients with the published formula — this recipe hasn't been kitchen-tested by us yet.