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10 Profound Facts About Potatoes
10 Profound Facts About Potatoes
10 Profound Facts About Potatoes
While Ireland may have aided in the potato’s rise to international fame,
that’s where the country’s involvement stops.
The potato was actually domesticated from a wild plant in a region that
includes the northwestern of Bolivia and the south of Peru.
The rest of the list comprises all the different potato cultivars that have
been developed in the 400 or so years since.
While there are thousands of different potatoes, generally, only a
handful will be available within a region.
In the UK, for example, there are only 80 or so different potatoes that
are more commonly found on a larger commercial scale.
People who say that not all potatoes are born equal just don’t know
how to use potatoes correctly.
The thing is that each variety of potatoes has a different amount of
starch, among other things.
Potatoes with higher starch levels, such as the Russet, are defined as
more floury and are better suited to being fried in the form of a french
fry or hash brown or baked in the oven.
Lower starch levels in potatoes give them a waxy feel, which makes
them much more suitable for eating whole in salads and stews.
It turns out that the Solanaceae family is very, very broad and includes
many plants which we wouldn’t think to be related.
When a potato has gone green, it simply means that it’s been exposed
to a bit too much sun during storage.
The spud then converts that sunlight into chlorophyll (that’s the
chemical that makes plants green).
If a potato has developed a few green spots, it’s also a sign that it’s
begun to try and protect itself from hungry animals by producing a
neurotoxin called solanine.
This doesn’t mean you should necessarily throw out a potato that’s
developed a green spot or two, though.
Small spots can be peeled or cut away, but you should probably just
throw the potato out if there’s any more than that.
To give you an idea, if an adult ate just one green potato, they would
become nauseous and develop headaches, with the possibility of it
developing into something much more severe!
When it’s time to bring them out of storage, the potatoes need to be
slowly brought back up to room temperature!
These days all we do with potatoes is eat them, and that’s all we’d
really think to do with them, to be honest.
The Incas had a much closer relationship to potatoes and used them
to treat various physical ailments.
A typical cure for toothache was to carry one around with you.
While potatoes are tubers, sweet potatoes are actually just the
enlarged roots of the sweet potato plant.
They don’t even come from the same family, with sweet potatoes
belonging to Convolvulaceae, the same family as morning glory.
Whether you like to boil them, mash them, or cook them in some form
of stew, potatoes are a genuinely fantastic food.