Potatoes are a good food…
…although they sometimes get a bad press.
But are they actually a great food, especially when served cold?
Pass the potato salad, please.
The New Neo
A blog about political change, among other things
…although they sometimes get a bad press.
But are they actually a great food, especially when served cold?
Pass the potato salad, please.
Not a fan. We had them with pretty much every evening meal (supper) in my youth so my taste buds grew tired, make that weary, of them. Baked, mashed, boiled (very common), and occasionally au gratin. Aside from serving as a vehicle for bacon, butter, and salt, I don’t care to eat them ever again. 🙂
Potatoes are a gift from above. I could do a whole Forrest Gump soliloquy on the joys of every culinary iteration of these divine tubers. My favorite is probably home fries—thick slices of firm, waxy potatoes fried crisp with carmelized onions, sigh. But unlike you, Neo, my metabolism gets overwhelmed by high carb intake, so potatoes and pasta and thick, chewy bread and macaroni and cheese and pho noodles and oatmeal and sticky rice and—oh, sorry, I got carried away there with the memories—are rare treats.
RigelDog:
Did you read the link? You might be surprised at what it says about cold potatoes.
steve walsh:
I’m basically with you. I rarely eat potatoes, except fries every now and then for a special treat, and once in a while a baked one with a small amount of butter. However, I do like potato salad. And if the article is correct (who knows?), then it’s pretty good for you as long as you don’t glop it up. I don’t really glop it up. I boil small red potatoes, cool them in the skins, peel them, put in a small amount of olive oil and lemon, add salt to taste, and cumin. Very very good. Also good with leaf coriander chopped up. Or substitute dried mint for the cumin.
It’s middle eastern potato salad. Very yummy, and I bet you weren’t served it as a child.
One of my favourites recipes, which I learnt in Finland, and it’s a variant from a traditional dish called Poronkaristys.
The original recipe uses raindeer, though I use beef without problems.
It’s quite easy, delicious and mostly unknown out of Finland.
Make a quick sautee in some casserole with some beef (I use minced beef), onions and a bit of flour (to make it thicker). You don’t need to fully make the meat and onion, since it will be stewing for long. Just fry it a bit so the flour gets a nice taste. Then add beer and let it stew until it gets thick. No need to spice (beyond salt). And that’s all. Instead of beer you can use milk or butter (though then it’s a sautee instead of a stew), though honestly I prefer the one with beer.
You serve it with mashed potato. You can add lyngonberry jam, though not everybody likes the mix, so it’s better to keep it separated so people can decide whether to add or not.
Highly recommended.
The potato has always been underrated. Many food faddists worship various fruits, and while they tend to have high fiber, they almost always have lots of fructose. Potatoes have complex carbohydrates and are much easier on the blood sugar regulatory system, even when served hot. Did not know about RS.
Also, most folks get quite a bit of sodium in their diet, but the body needs a balance of sodium and potassium. The most common sources of the latter are: potatoes, carrots, celery, and bananas. And how ’bout that celery! A real caloric zero; or is it negative?
You are correct that I would never have been served that as a child, especially with those exotic spices! Yours does sound tasty – though sort of makes my point that the potato is vehicle or vessel for other super tasty stuff. Perhaps I’ll give it a try. Tastes change over the years and it’s been a very long time since I’ve had potatoes.
Yann:
I used to make a stew almost exactly like that. I forget where I got the recipe. I was beef, onions, beer, cooked for many hours. Very very good, although for some reason I often got indigestion from it.
Some unqualified good news, for a change!
I recently saw that rice (plain white) is drastically lower in calories if you cook it, cool it, and reheat it. I wonder if it’s the same principle.
Yuck.
Potatoes are properly served warm (if mashed) or hot (if baked). Butter, sour cream not optional.
I dug up a row of baby potatoes in early May (golf ball sized). Most of them became our version of potato salad. Will dig up the other, longer row soon. Those will be either scalloped, hash browns or mashed potatoes with butter, buttermilk, salt, and pepper. Potatoes are wonderful.
Art Deco:
What, no potato salad? A classic dish?
For this I’d be willing to set aside my potato abstinence:
https://newengland.com/today/food/breakfast-brunch/donuts/maine-potato-doughnuts/
The humble potato is nearly as versatile as wheat and just as tasty. Then consider the combination of the two to make gnocchis.
FYI: If you have never had homemade gnoccis, you are missing out.
A lot of foods are changed energetically by heat and microwaves. Too much heating and microwaves can convert nutrition into some kind of sludge that the people needs to detox off of.
I like to cook potatoes in an oven at around 375 or 400, just enough to get a crispy outside, and then let it cool down.
Usually some kind of green accumulated gunk is on the outside of the skin that needs to be sliced off. That stuff is very bitter.
It is not microwave food that lacks nutrition, it is the microwave pumping the water and food with radiation that makes it lack nutrition. Keep that in mind.
Oh the dreaded radiation; from microwaves to infrared. Beware, beware, spoke someone who doesn’t seem to know that the green-colored potato skin is a toxin produced when the potatoes get too much light. That’s what potato peelers are for, and of course “the dose makes the poison” Paracelcus.
During WWII, sailors abandoning merchants ships were advised , if they had the time, to grab as many potatoes out of the potato locker, ( located on deck ), as possible. They are edible uncooked, if somewhat unpalatable, and contain a LOT of water. See the book How To Abandon Ship, by Phil Richards.
A friend of mine explained to me how to make really good hash browns. Wally, a chef, told it takes 12-24 hours to make a good order of hash browns, as you must bake the taters on the first day, and then let them sit in the fridge overnight. This drives a lot of the water out of the potatoes. Then, after grating them, you should use a restaraunt type griddle, as they have more surface area than a frying pan, and get hotter. Spread melted butter or oil across the griddle, and taking a handful of hash browns, fling them onto the surface, so they spread out in a thin layer, so they all get crispy. Season and serve the way you like hash browns.
I prefer to make the eggs over easy, and put them on top of the hash browns, so the yolk soaks into the hash browns! Fried ham is a rather acceptable accompaniment. Along with English muffins with butter and raspberry jam.
Badger wisdom! nom nom nom…
What, no potato salad? A classic dish?
None. Absolutely repulsive. Enjoyed by (1) people of German ancestry, who have their forebears’ awful taste and (2) women who wish to play passive-aggressive games with their husbands and children (though tuna fish is the preferred instrument for this). See the ‘dinner of revenge’ scene in Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections (which involved rutabagas and liver; keep in mind that POWs were fed rutabaga mash in German camps). Subtler versions of the fictional Enid Lambert’s revenge are executed with tuna fish and potato salad. My mother preferred cabbage salad and dill seasoning for this sort of thing.
While I’ve long been of the view that the highest and best use of the potato is pomme frites – the humble ‘french fry’, in any form, potatoes are one of the worst foods for anyone with carbohydrate issues.
steve walsh on September 10, 2018 at 8:44 pm at 8:44 pm said:
For this I’d be willing to set aside my potato abstinence:
https://newengland.com/today/food/breakfast-brunch/donuts/maine-potato-doughnuts/
* * *
In my childhood, our hometown boasted a “Spudnuts” shop, which was patronized by everyone from miles around it helped that we were the county seat; was the favorite hangout of HS students, AWOL or not; and was always full of ex-pats during Homecoming week.
I don’t know if they used this recipe, but the ‘nuts they served up were far superior to any other offerings in town.
Coincidentally, I discovered just last night that a good friend who grew up in California also had a Spudnuts shoppe as his favorite haunt back home.
as usual, nothing is as bad for you , or as good for you, as the Experts of the Day tell us. the smart money is on moderation in all things.
it’s truly a shame that so many here are spudphobic. They clearly have never tasted my Mother’s twice-baked potatoes. Wow!
P.S. Yes, I am one of those potato-loving Teutonic barbarians. can’t help who I am or how I feel about potatoes.
More than you’ll ever want to know about potatoes
https://potatohack.com/
Neo: RigelDog:
Did you read the link? You might be surprised at what it says about cold potatoes.}}}
It was interesting to read how cold potatoes lock in a certain kind of fiber that is probably healthier—I’ll keep that in mind when I indulge. I could happily eat cold potato salad every day. However, potatoes are still an unhealthy food for me as a Type 2. From the article: “Potatoes are high on the glycemic index, which is not helpful to those struggling to maintain blood sugar levels.” High carb foods spike insulin and my metabolism has become insulin resistant after years of a high carb diet (ergo, T2).
RigelDog:
HOT potatoes are high on the glycemic index. COLD potatoes are not.
Roy said:
“…The humble potato is nearly as versatile as wheat and just as tasty…”
I humbly offer that in so many ways the potato is better than wheat. Wheat, barley, whatevs, cereal grains are affected by weather. The potato is a tuber growing underground. Wheat can and will get bowed down by rain and unseasonal snow. And when it dips into the mud you can’t eat it. I could go on. Napoleon will not burn your crop of potatoes.
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Cold potatoes = resistant starch. I can’t believe they passed over this topic so breezily!
Resistant starch feeds your gut bacteria, improves insulin sensitivity, works with magnesium absorption, and so on. Just wonderful…
From a 2014 blog post: https://www.marksdailyapple.com/the-definitive-guide-to-resistant-starch/
and this as a follow-up with 220 comments:
https://www.marksdailyapple.com/resistant-starch-your-questions-answered/
I add potato starch to my daily (chocolate) protein shake. It thickens it considerably and makes it more like a milk shake without changing the chocolate flavor. This week I rec’d a 25 pound bag of it since I use it so much. (It should last a long time…)
Some purists eat raw potatoes – ugh.