Why are poptatoes so small nowadays

[TexMex]

I am starting to get really frustrated at trying to find suitable potatoes for chips. Looking round our local supermarkets there are bags labled "Baking Potatoes" that cost well OTT and don't go brown when you deep fat fry them.

All the other varieties seem to have a maximum diameter of about 2". I like my chips to be at least 3".

I'm beggining to think that this is some new EU legislation that specifies the size that a potatoe should be, as they are also suspiciously uniform in size. Or perhaps Harry Ramsden has a deal where he gets the big ones from every crop?

I never used to have this problem. I'd buy a sack of spuds, select the small ones when I'm having mash or roast, and save the big ones for my chips. Just lately, every bag I can find is full of small ones, EVEN the Maris Piper.

 

[oilman]

It's marketing amongst other things. Years ago you'd buy a bag of spuds of all sizes. Then someone worked out there's more money in getting the big ones out and selling them as baking potatoes. Load of c r*p, all potatoes are baking potatoes, or boiling potatoes or roasting potatoes or mashing potatoes, but since we're all stupid enough to believe advertisers we get fed all this eyewash.

If you go to a small farm shop where they might grow their own you could possibly get mixed sizes.

To allow last years potatoes to be available now, they need storing carefully, and that'smostly in controlled sheds - which cost money to operate so the suppliers need more money for their potatoes to fund it. Potatoes are also a comparativley high value crop these days too.

However, does it really matter what size they are? Your desire for 3" is just the sort of information marketers latch onto and so up goes the price of 3" potatoes. After you have chewed and digested them, they all look the same anyway. (refer to 4th sentence, 3rd word)

Do you have a garden? If so dig up the lawn and grow potatoes, then you can have what size you want.

 

[kendor]

the fact that they are uniform in size suggests an automated process going on somewhere.

 

[TexMex]

It's not in the eating so much that the length that bothers me. It's just that I find when I shake the basket, smaller ones seem to stand on end and then do a nosedive through the holes in the bottom of the basket in my deep fat fryer. Having them longer encourages them to lie horizontal.

As for growing stuff. I've tried loads of times. Same result every time. I suddenly remeber that I've not checked on the crop for the last 6 months. When I check, no sign of the crop, just a patch of unidentified weeds.

 

[IanDB]

Sounds like a case of supermarkets "catering" for the public preference - or put another way making things look more uniform than nature intended. If you can buy a bag of potatoes by the roadside or from a farm shop you'll find ungraded potatoes at a quarter of the price of the supermarket.

 

[AdamW]

3" chips are healthier than 2" chips. Reason being, the surface area per unit volume is less, so it absorbs less fat. This effect is more noticeable the chunkier the chip (French-style chips being like matchsticks, it wouldn't make a difference).

Is this baking potato phenomenon the same with the "extra large" onions?

 

[david and julie]

It's not just the uniformity in nearly all supermarket fruit and veg, what about the price! Most of us use the supermarkets for convenience these days, but as I am semi retired I have the time to go to an old fashioned greengrocers. Only last week I pointed out to my wife the pineapples and grapes to name just 2 items were exactly, to the penny, half the price. They were even the same makes too.

I think the best spuds at the moment are Cyprus complete with dirt, as they used to be. Not the spotless c--p you get at the "super"markets?

Must agree about farm shops.

 

[ban-all-sheds]

It's marketing amongst other things. Years ago you'd buy a bag of spuds of all sizes. Then someone worked out there's more money in getting the big ones out and selling them as baking potatoes.

That's true - can often work in your favour though, (if you're shopping in a supermarket), as a pack of large potatoes at a fixed price often weighs so much that it works out cheaper than the loose ones by weight.

Load of c r*p, all potatoes are baking potatoes, or boiling potatoes or roasting potatoes or mashing potatoes,

That's very much not true - different varieties of potatoes are better for different things, depending in how floury or waxy they are etc. For example, a nice floury one like King Edward makes lovely mash, and the best roast potatoes in the world, but it's useless for boiling, or, for example, pommes boulangères as it falls apart. Similarly a waxy one like Marfona will make a very heavy, almost slimy mash, and won't crisp up nearly so well when roasted as a nice par-boiled and battered King Edward, but will hold its shape for pommes boulangères.

And for potato salad, you want something like Charlotte or Pink Fir Apple.

Also, as you hint, this really is the wrong time of year for large "old potatoes"

 

[waran]

I might be wrong about this but along the lines of what oilman said aren't baking potatoes o.k. for making chips? Don't they just have to have a high starch and low water content which baking potatoes do.

 

[TexMex]

aren't baking potatoes o.k.

Not the ones I've been tried. They just don't go brown. They gradually get softer and at their most palatable state they are floppy, white and still a bit waxy.

I prefer a soft, slightly fluffy centre with a nice brown outer. Like chip shop chips I suppose. If you're used to the "french fries" from burger outlets then you'd probably find the floppy white things fine.

Next time I produce a decent chip I'll take note of what variety potatoe I've used. I really must get down to a farm shop, hopefully the staff will know a bit about how their produce performs in the fryer.

As for oven chips, what can be simpler than just dropping your chips in the deep fat fryer. No problem. so; What is the problem to which oven chips are the answer?

 

[ban-all-sheds]

aren't baking potatoes o.k.

Not the ones I've been tried. They just don't go brown. They gradually get softer and at their most palatable state they are floppy, white and still a bit waxy.

Have you tried frying them twice? When they've reached that floppy state, lift out the basket, let the oil get nice and hot again, and then plunge them back in for a minute or so.

Also, although I said "oil" as that's what most people use, including me before I gave in to oven chips, beef dripping is much better.

 

[oilman]

I agree with using lard or dripping, always produces better chips. As I remember, you cook them to get the water in the chips hot and do the cooking part, then lift the basket and hang it on the edge of the pan while the fat gets up to smoking point, then drop the chips back in. They cretainly go brown!

I still maintain you can cook any spud, any way. They might be awful, but when you're hungry enough it won't matter.

 

[TexMex]

beef dripping is much better.

You're absolutely right, I'd forgotten about dripping. I'll have to get some and give it a go.

before I gave in to oven chips.

What on earth for.
The wife has occaisionally got them in, and actually, I found that they're not to bad if you cook them in the deep fat fryer. Don't rate them from the oven though.

 

[securespark]

Oven chips are w@nk. If you want to be healthy, eat good quality chips less often.

BTW, what are poptatoes???????

A little boogie woogie on your plate?

 

[TexMex]

Oven chips are w@nk. If you want to be healthy, eat good quality chips less often

Spot on. I also worry that there may be some hidden artificial additives in them. You know some magic ingredient that binds the fat to the starch molecules of the chips, probably derived from the sphincter of a rat, or some process that allows them to use potatoes past their sell by date by the injection of monkey sweat gland extract or something .

You never hear about these things until they become a cause for concern. By then it's too late, because some vital organ may have become saturated with some biological time bomb .

what are poptatoes?

Probably the ones you cook in the microwave without piercing the skin.