There are thousands of potato varieties grown around the world, and it can be exciting to see (and taste!) the differences when you use different potatoes in your everyday recipes.
In addition to baking, roasting or lightly boiling potatoes, two of our favourite recipes include:
Homemade French fries: heat a large pot half full of canola oil while cutting spuds into large fries. Once the oil is hot enough to sizzle, drop in a few handfuls of potato pieces. Cook until desired crispiness. (The oil can be cooled, stored in a glass jar, then reused another day.)
Twice-baked potatoes: bake potatoes, scoop out the insides, mash them, then stir in chard stem pieces, minced/crushed garlic, onions, leeks, seasonings, etc. Scoop the insides back into the skins, top with cheese and bake for 30 minutes.
How to store potatoes
New (washed, “uncured”) potatoes will keep for a few weeks in a container/bag in the fridge.
Dry and dusty (“cured”) potatoes can be stored for months in a cool, dark, airy place.
A special note re: blue Russian potatoes
Don’t be intimidated by their unusual colour: blue Russian potatoes can be cooked using any normal potato recipe (see above). Some potatoes are “waxy” while others are “starchy”: blue Russians are on the starchy end of the spectrum and taste more like russet potatoes than Yukon golds. The skins don’t need to be peeled off.
Blue Russians make fantastic French fries and keep their intriguing colour when cut into bite-sized pieces and roasted on their own or with other vegetables. They make unusual but lovely scalloped potatoes.
Unfortunately, the purple colour becomes more grey-ish if the potatoes are boiled, so they may not be the most attractive choice for potato salad or mashed potatoes.
We grow mostly blue Russian potatoes at Makaria Farm because they store very well through the winter and seem to fend off our resident wire worms better than other potato varieties. (Wire worms burrow into potatoes and leave unsightly holes and tunnels. They are not good neighbours.)