Potatoes: going to seed?

Duck59

Duck59

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According to today's Guardian, sales of raw potatoes have dropped by 20% in the past ten years in the UK. So who is failing to buy potatoes these days?

Well, it's not me, so somebody must be. The other obvious question is why? Are we all so lazy now that we can't be bothered to cook them? I certainly see little evidence of a reduction in crisp and chip scoffing.
 
Sales(private) have been dropping year on year of homegrown spuds. Imports have grown in the same period however.
 
Duck59 said:
According to today's Guardian, sales of raw potatoes have dropped by 20% in the past ten years in the UK. So who is failing to buy potatoes these days?
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It is certainly not I. I buy more potatoes now than I've ever done.
 
Potatoes are one of my favourite vegetables and I buy them a lot. They are so versatile. But I do think perhaps they have fallen out of fashion - apart from chips (french fries in U.S.) and I think most households in the UK buy frozen oven chips rather than cook chips from scratch.

If you think about restaurant food, how many dishes can you think of which contain potatoes other than chips? Some curry dishes do, but not much else.
 
morning glory said:
Potatoes are one of my favourite vegetables and I buy them a lot. They are so versatile. But I do think perhaps they have fallen out of fashion - apart from chips (french fries in U.S.) and I think most households in the UK buy frozen oven chips rather than cook chips from scratch.

If you think about restaurant food, how many dishes can you think of which contain potatoes other than chips? Some curry dishes do, but not much else.
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In the US, most restaurants offer as a choice of sides a baked (jacket) potato, mashed potatoes, fried potatoes or some type of french fry (chips). For breakfast, hash browns.
Some fast food restaurants offer tater tots, spicy curly fries or other types of deep fried potatoes.
One restaurant has roasted potatoes, potatoes in their pot roast, mashed potatoes, baked potatoes and potato salad.

As to at the store, you can buy several varieties of raw potatoes, in the deli section: potato salad, mashed potatoes and french fries, in the refrigerator section: potato salad and mashed potatoes, in the frozen foods section: every type of potato I mentioned in the restaurant section, and you can even buy dried mashed potatoes (many flavors), just add water. And there is at least 50 meters of various flavors of potato chips (crisps).
Potatoes are very big over here.
 
I like potatoes and we probably eat them several times a week. I'm particularly a fan of mashed potato and I like mixing other things into it like garlic or herbs. Baked potatoes are a favourite here too.
 
I very rarely used to eat potatoes at all (only as chips, or in a curry/as part of an other Indian dish) but since I started getting my veg boxes I've started eating them more often. A lot of the types of organic potatoes I get are not available in the supermarket and are quite delicious - Triplo are one of my favourites, and I notice some supermarkets have started stocking them now. I did used to like Austrian potatoes - Tescos used to stock them several years ago and they were tasty, but like all good things they were not stocked for very long.
 
The potatoes available here are either Dutch potatoes grown in China or Dutch potatoes grown in China. Our decision is - do they look good or not.

This week's:

march tops spuds s.jpg


[Edit: The uppermost one of those went into my egg and potato dum yesterday.]
 
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morning glory said:
Are they always this large? And are they floury type potatoes?
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No. They vary in size (and quality - they were good ones). Not really floury - high starch content though.

Elawin said:
They look OK. The question is, did they taste OK?!
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Those tasted OK in the dum but the dum spices really overpower the potato taste. They do well as chips, jackets and roast potatoes but I really have nothing to compare them with. I would say that they beat the crap out of what McDonalds and KFC serve.
 
Yorky said:
No. They vary in size (and quality - they were good ones). Not really floury - high starch content though.



Those tasted OK in the dum but the dum spices really overpower the potato taste. They do well as chips, jackets and roast potatoes but I really have nothing to compare them with. I would say that they beat the crap out of what McDonalds and KFC serve.
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Honey,
Any potato beats the crap out of what McDonalds and KFC call fries. Fast food fries traumatized me so I wouldn't even order fries from anywhere because I was afraid I would get those horrible things. I have learned to ask are the French fries (chips) fresh or frozen. Fresh I can eat, frozen no thanks.
 
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