Food Ingredient: Russet Potato

I recently sent in a vial full of saliva to the 23andMe company and found out I’m pretty much just your average Irish girl whose family immigrated to America decades before I was born. Learning this, I also realized I’m probably made of potatoes and beer which explains my impeccable taste in food (i.e. I love French fries and other things cooked in a deep fryer). Seemed only sensible to dedicate a whole post to the russet potato, which is so diverse that it just begs to be used for every single course of the day. Really.

The russet is the most popular potato out of the bunch. The reason? You can DO ANYTHING to these bad boys and they’ll taste delicious. You can bake them. YUM. You can turn them into French fries. DOUBLE YUM. You can mash them and boil them and roast them and that means LOTS OF YUM. Hating the russet potato is like saying you hate eating because surely there is some form of it that you like.

Russet potatoes have an earthy taste which by itself is… meh. However, it’s known for using toppings like butter, cheese and bacon. Tell me how can you go wrong with that? Unless your vegan of course.

Now don’t get it twisted, just because I prefer my potatoes with lots of heart stopping toppings does not mean they are not nutritional! They’re fat free (which is how I justify adding fattening ingredients). They are surprisingly high in vitamin C, are great for getting your daily fill of fiber, have low sodium and more potassium than bananas! Here’s the thing though… They have a high sugar content! Okay, so maybe *that’s* why it’s one of my favorite vegetables! Oh, and the only cholesterol you’ll find here is whatever you add to the potato! (Hi butter and bacon!)

Now you have your good potatoes and your bad potatoes. A good potato will be firm. It’s skin will be smoothalicious and it’s coloring will be even. It will also have very few eyes (they’re watching you! ha!) and they will be delicious. A bad potato will be soft, wrinkly, and look green. Just like a sick octogenarian. Wait, what?

Let me tell you though, that if you don’t store them properly, a good potato can quickly become a bad potato. Keep them in a well ventilated and dark space to stop those little eyes we discussed earlier from sprouting. Leaving potatoes to lay around in the light can actually cause them to go green, giving them a bitter taste (yuck!). Oh, and don’t even think about storing uncooked potatoes in the refrigerator. It will make them taste wonky and give them a bad texture. This is because freezing or refrigerating them will cause the starches to turn to sugar aaaand, you’d rather have the potato be its best self. Not something that was accidentally transformed because of improper storage! Finally, do yourself a favor. Do NOT wash the potatoes before storage. You should only scrub them right before use as washing them will actually cause them to go rotten faster!

I feel like I’ve given you LOTS of info about the humble russet potato. It’s the best one you’ll find for making baked potatoes (my humble opinion) and should be your potato of choice to mash on Thanksgiving!

Recipes featuring the Russet Potato:

• Mashed Russet Potatoes with Cream Cheese

Photo by Jan Kolar / VUI Designer on Unsplash