The Potato Thread

W

wensleydale

Well-Known Member
This thread will be a place where we can discuss the various dishes that one can make out of the Potato, Solanum Tuberosum. I have come to realize in the past day or so that we need a place to argue over what exactly constitutes french fries (chips) what constitutes chips (fried thinly sliced potatoes, or to some people crisps) and so on and so forth. I can only hope that we all have the same definition of a baked potato.

So what are chips anyway?
 
I don't think one needs to argue over what chips or crisps or baked potatoes are. The terms will be standard for the country you are from. The only thing that needs to be argued is that freedom fries is the dumbest name-change in the history of food.
 
I really love potatoes and at times I think about how such a bland food is so popular and widespread. I generally don't eat french fries as I like to eat healthy, but I love some good mashed potatoes or even simple broiled red potatoes with butter and salt. BTW I believe french fries were invented not in France but in neighboring Belgium.
 
French fries indeed originated in Belgium and it is unfortunately very rare to find proper fries outside of Belgium and the Netherlands...
 
Arizona Docent said:
BTW I believe french fries were invented not in France but in neighboring Belgium.
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there are various stories about the name and origins. Cutting a potato into strips and then frying it isn't much of an invention so you'd think it would be French, but really it was probably common through Europe. And I'd bet the Incas were doing it long before potatoes even made it to the Old World.

I think the story of American soldiers in World War One naming them French fries after being introduced to them by the French-speaking Belgians is apocryphal because there are older American cook-books already calling them that.

Another version of the name I've heard is that it is corrupted from "frenched" or "French-cut" fries (i.e. cut into strips) rather than being a reference to a country of origin.
 
getting back to the purpose of the thread - making people hungry - I think the best way to have potatoes is mashed. There's quite an art to making good mashed potatoes. The milk and butter need to be in just the right amounts. And then there's the question of whether you like them mashed or whipped. Whipped can be good, but mashed is better. I leave the skins on the potatoes too, but not everyone likes that.

Adding other items into the mashed potatoes is good too, like chives or bacon.
 
lintworm said:
French fries indeed originated in Belgium and it is unfortunately very rare to find proper fries outside of Belgium and the Netherlands...
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When I was in Belgium, french fries were never on the menu in most restaurants because they needed a license/permit/something similar.
 
A way that I like to have potatoes is new potatoes cut into thick circles and fried so they are basically home-made chips (not crisps) but it's much quicker than cutting them into long thin strips.

Is everyone in this thread in agreement that potatoes are always better with the skin on? I strongly support this idea, though not everyone in my family agrees.

Oh, and another cool form of potatoes - spiral shaped. During summer there is a stall outside the Warsaw Zoo that sells spiral potatoes that are fried on the spot in front of you.
 
Can anyone tell me what they think of Maris Piper potatoes? I keep thinking of growing them, as I have been told that they are the preferred potato for making Fish and Chips (though I truly believe that Green Mountain or Kennebec could give them a run for their money.)

And oh yes, there is no point in a potato without the skin unless maybe you are making mashed potatoes.
 
LaughingDove said:
Is everyone in this thread in agreement that potatoes are always better with the skin on? I strongly support this idea, though not everyone in my family agrees.
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almost always. I don't generally whip potatoes, but if you are making whipped potatoes then I don't think you can really leave the skins there because the point of whipping them is to get a soft even texture.

I think that with every other way of cooking potatoes leaving the skins on is best.
 
LaughingDove said:
Is everyone in this thread in agreement that potatoes are always better with the skin on?
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I agree for new potatoes - but old potatoes with bad skins really need peeling, particularly before mashing or roasting, I check the skin carefully before baking potatoes in their jackets or as wedges.
It's strange how much you can miss something as simple as a potato when you can't have one. When I lived in Ghana for 2 years, no potatoes were available, although there were rumours that some expats had managed to grow some at the college near the summit of Amedzofe, the highest point in the country. The French had organised things much better, two or three times I travelled across the border with some friends to the little town of Kpalime in Togo for lunch at the Mini-Brasserie. The menu was very short, but we always ordered steak, frites and a proper French beer - it was a wonderful change from rice, yams and cassava. We always took back a few baguettes too.
As soon as I returned to England, I boiled about a pound of new potatoes in their skins, added a generous quantity of butter and ate the lot with great pleasure :D
 
Roasted potatoes have to be my favourite - peel, par-boil, drain, shake around to fluff up the outsides, add to a dish of pre-heated oil, turn all over to coat, back in the oven for 40 mins. Devine! Shame I only really get time to make them occasionally. Oh, that sizzling sound when you add them to the hot oil, and you know that soon they'll be all crispy and golden :)

Mash is also a favourite, although it always seems to take more potatoes than expected; I tend to leave the skins on and just mash with butter. My boyfriend peels them and mashes with butter, milk and sometimes pepper (which shocked me the first time, the pepper nearly took out my tastebuds!)
 
wensleydale said:
Can anyone tell me what they think of Maris Piper potatoes? I keep thinking of growing them, as I have been told that they are the preferred potato for making Fish and Chips (though I truly believe that Green Mountain or Kennebec could give them a run for their money.)

And oh yes, there is no point in a potato without the skin unless maybe you are making mashed potatoes.
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Maris Pipers are an excellent potato, they go nice and fluffy for roasting/baking etc :) Growing up we always got a sack of Maris Pipers from a nearby farm shop for the winter. Given the choice I wouldn't pick any other variety :D
 
gentle lemur said:
I agree for new potatoes - but old potatoes with bad skins really need peeling, particularly before mashing or roasting, I check the skin carefully before baking potatoes in their jackets or as wedges.
It's strange how much you can miss something as simple as a potato when you can't have one. When I lived in Ghana for 2 years, no potatoes were available, although there were rumours that some expats had managed to grow some at the college near the summit of Amedzofe, the highest point in the country. The French had organised things much better, two or three times I travelled across the border with some friends to the little town of Kpalime in Togo for lunch at the Mini-Brasserie. The menu was very short, but we always ordered steak, frites and a proper French beer - it was a wonderful change from rice, yams and cassava. We always took back a few baguettes too.
As soon as I returned to England, I boiled about a pound of new potatoes in their skins, added a generous quantity of butter and ate the lot with great pleasure :D
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Supposedly the Potato can be grown in Hawaii, but only during the cool season, or about 2500 feet in elevation.

Potato--Farmer's Bookshelf

I feel like the biggest jerk in the world saying this but I'm not hugely fond of a lot of tropical cuisine. Southeast Asian food I like, and I suppose I would like the food in Hawaii, but I've never been fond of stuff like sweet potatoes and plantain. The whole cuisine of some countries is just too sweet and starchy somehow for me, and I'm American so that's saying something (maybe I would like it more if I ate it more often, and I'm willing to grant that my food might seem equally odd to someone from say, Brazil). Oh yes, I do like rice, and I do like the occasional dose of things like arepas, and okay, sweet potato fries, but all in all I prefer my temperate things like potatoes and a baguette or three (I love bread). So you have my utmost respect if you lived in Ghana for two years and ate the local cuisine regularly.
 
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wensleydale said:
So you have my utmost respect if you lived in Ghana for two years and ate the local cuisine regularly.
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It wasn't like 'The Heart of Darkness': there were occasional shortages, but no real problems. I was posted near enough to Accra to be able to do day trips on a good road in a modern bus (leaving from the middle of town at 5.30 am, back just after the football results on the BBC World Service, about 5.15 pm). So I could borrow books from the British Council Library, look for bacon and sausages in the supermarkets and have a liver sandwich and a beer for lunch at Fawzi's Lebanese restaurant next to the bus station. There was plenty of local fruit and veg, imported beef was sometimes available, but local pork, chicken and goat were fine. I can still cook a pretty good groundnut stew. Street food such as deep-fried yam chips with hot pepper sauce and freshly roasted peanuts were our usual lunches and as there were about a dozen expats in town, we regularly had dinner parties in the evenings. Missing nice bread, potatoes and fresh milk wasn't so bad. I think I missed cheese most (like Ben Gunn in 'Treasure Island'). But it was only a crisis if all the bars in town ran out of beer, local gin with fresh orange juice doesn't sound too bad - but it was really rather horrible.
Incidentally Ghanaians in England had to make strange concoctions with instant mashed potato, trying to replicate fufu (pounded boiled yam) in those days before large scale air freight. I should add that Ghanaians are wonderfully hospitable and generous people. I remember when one my colleagues gave us a bag of about 20 beautiful grapefruit; he said that the Germans had planted the trees in his home village, when Togoland was their colony, but nobody liked them now and the children just used them as footballs. They were delicious.
 
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Chlidonias said:
I don't think one needs to argue over what chips or crisps or baked potatoes are. The terms will be standard for the country you are from. The only thing that needs to be argued is that freedom fries is the dumbest name-change in the history of food.
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I dunno, in WWI the US government tried to get people to call sauerkraut "liberty cabbage", I think that's strong competition for "dumbest name change".
 
TheMightyOrca said:
I dunno, in WWI the US government tried to get people to call sauerkraut "liberty cabbage", I think that's strong competition for "dumbest name change".
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while liberty cabbage is a stupid name, Germany was actually at war with the rest of the world at that point so the name-change is by no means as idiotic as the US trying to remove "French" because France opposed their invasion of a country in order to take control of oil supplies.
 
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