4 ms·

Don't please. I am salivating. One of the things that people in the UK and Ireland do not realize is how lucky they are to have varieties of potatoes. I have

Don't please. I am salivating. One of the things that people in the UK and Ireland do not realize is how lucky they are to have varieties of potatoes. I have never seen anything other than the classifications of Red/Russet/Yellow/White in North America. Perhaps there are some regional growers of Kerr's Pink or Maris Piper but they certainly do not stock the supermarkets with them and I have never seen them in farmer's markets.

dekhn 6y ago
It's hard to find truly deep variety in potatoes in the US. I don't think people buy enough of the "non-standard" forms to really justify selling them to consumers (restaurants are a different story). There are a few exceptions, for example Monterey Market in Berkeley, CA has a wide range of potato variants (fingerling, banana, purple) depending on what's available.
- chrisseaton 6y ago
  Need to start calling them ‘heirloom’ varieties like tomatoes.
OJFord 6y ago
Weird, that really surprises me. Even the petrol (gas) station across the road (highway) from my flat (apartment) sells generic white, generic red, new, Charlotte, sweet (yams?), and Maris Piper. Maybe one of jersey royal & king Edward too, I'm not sure. Potatoes are shockingly cheap too, for some reason I suddenly 'noticed' that at the weekend, around 40p/kg, (uh.. 25c/lb ish) that's crackers (cookies for cheese) isn't it? I'm sure there's other things you have or have variety in that we don't, but I wouldn't fancy not having a choice of potatoes. Though I almost always get Maris Piper to be honest, so it's not even really about choice as such, just knowing what I like and what I'm getting, I only buy 'white' if there's nothing specific (and more appropriate) available. Sometimes 'white' will tell you what the actually are (this batch) on the date/producer label bit, or what they might be a mix of, which is nice. Well, that's more than I've previously written or thought about potatoes...
kasey_junk 6y ago
At my farmers market this past weekend 1 farmers had 9 different varietals of potato including some I would have guessed were radishes. The stall next had another 7 with only 1 overlap. Is it possible you are in an environment where potatoes aren’t very profitable crops? Because I see lots of variety in potatoes routinely and “North America” is a very big place to be saying anything about the food ways.

dekhn 6y ago

It's hard to find truly deep variety in potatoes in the US. I don't think people buy enough of the "non-standard" forms to really justify selling them to consumers (restaurants are a different story). There are a few exceptions, for example Monterey Market in Berkeley, CA has a wide range of potato variants (fingerling, banana, purple) depending on what's available.

chrisseaton 6y ago
Need to start calling them ‘heirloom’ varieties like tomatoes.

OJFord 6y ago

Weird, that really surprises me. Even the petrol (gas) station across the road (highway) from my flat (apartment) sells generic white, generic red, new, Charlotte, sweet (yams?), and Maris Piper. Maybe one of jersey royal & king Edward too, I'm not sure. Potatoes are shockingly cheap too, for some reason I suddenly 'noticed' that at the weekend, around 40p/kg, (uh.. 25c/lb ish) that's crackers (cookies for cheese) isn't it? I'm sure there's other things you have or have variety in that we don't, but I wouldn't fancy not having a choice of potatoes. Though I almost always get Maris Piper to be honest, so it's not even really about choice as such, just knowing what I like and what I'm getting, I only buy 'white' if there's nothing specific (and more appropriate) available. Sometimes 'white' will tell you what the actually are (this batch) on the date/producer label bit, or what they might be a mix of, which is nice. Well, that's more than I've previously written or thought about potatoes...

kasey_junk 6y ago

At my farmers market this past weekend 1 farmers had 9 different varietals of potato including some I would have guessed were radishes. The stall next had another 7 with only 1 overlap. Is it possible you are in an environment where potatoes aren’t very profitable crops? Because I see lots of variety in potatoes routinely and “North America” is a very big place to be saying anything about the food ways.