How To Buy And Store Potatoes

Potatoes intended for storage are left in the ground until fully matured. As the tuber matures underground, the plants wither and the potatoes can be left in the ground for up to 6 weeks after that. Ideal storage conditions are humid, cool but frost-free and in the dark at a temperature between 45?F/7?C to 50?F/10?C. Storing them at temperatures below 40?F/5?C causes some of the potato's starch to turn to sugar which spoils its flavor. This can be reversed by keeping the potatoes at room temperature for several days. Potatoes do not freeze well. Raw potatoes soften when frozen and cooked potatoes become grainy and mushy. Part- cooked chips and other fried potatoes can be successfully frozen and should be finished off in the oven.

Properly stored, potatoes can be kept for months. On a national level there is absolutely no excuse for dying and discarding (as happens regularly) one season's crop to make way for the next. Unlikely though it seems, potatoes bruise easily and should be handled as little as possible. These bruises manifest themselves as black cooked potatoes. Potatoes go moldy and rotten if they are kept in the damp. If you buy potatoes in polyethylene bags, they should be decanted as soon as you get home. Rotting and sprouting will happen if they are kept in the bag. They will also sprout if they are stored in a warm place. Light turns them green and this can be poisonous. Potatoes must not be stored anywhere near strong smell foodstuffs or chemicals. They are best stored in a vegetable rack so that air can circulate around them.

Varying The Mash

Basic mashed potatoes can be changed quite dramatically with a few additional ingredients and it can be tailored exactly to fit its many roles. With no liquid it is used in souffl?s, as a proving agent for bread, in cakes, doughnuts and sticky puddings. It forms the basic ingredient for many stuffing, sauces, bakes and gratins and combined with meat juices, cream, yoghurt, cheese, eggs, fresh herbs and aromatic spices, other pur?ed vegetables and fruits or fruit juices its origins are almost unrecognizable. It turns up, too, in sweet as well as savory potato cakes, balls, gnocchi, in potato wine and even in Christmas pudding. Good mashed potato is one of the great luxuries of life and I don't blame. Elvis for eating it every night for the last year of his life. What follows are some of the finest mashed potato recipes known to man; some classic, some involving unexpected additional ingredients but all delicious. Recipes that incorporate mashed potato as part of a separate cooking method or as an ingredient of a recipe appear in most other sections within the book. These dishes are all indexed at the end of the book.

Best Varieties For Mashing

The whole point of mashing potatoes or creating a pommes puree is to incorporate liquid, fat or oil and air into the potato. Dense-fleshed waxy varieties don't make good mash. I don't consider that pommes pur?e made with new potatoes, cream and olive oil is comparable to the sort of mash or pur?e that most people expect of a dish by that name. Fluffy mash is made with varieties such as Golden Wonder, King Edward, Willa and Maris Piper. There are approximately 140 calories in a portion of mashed potato with milk and butter.