Did you know that frying starchy foods can produce a cancer-causing substance? Me neither. It turns out that when starchy foods such as potatoes are cooked at high temperatures acrylamide is created. So when you fry, bake, grill, or roast potatoes you could be generating potentially harmful carcinogens.

A British study reveals that simply soaking potatoes can greatly reduce acrylamide and any subsequent health issues it could cause. Specifically, if the potatoes are washed the levels were reduced by as much as 23%. If soaked for 30 minutes, levels decreased up to 38%. And the decrease rose to 48% when the potatoes were soaked for two hours.

Martha recently showed us why potatoes don't really deserve their bad rep. If you want to create a healthy potato side dish, try some of these recipes from Prevention.