Sprouting Spuds

Keeping potatoes in the fridge increases their sugar content and produces the chemical acrylamide.
The FSA doesn't recommend refrigeration but admits that more research is needed into the consumption of large amounts of acrylamide and cancer.

Just what I was going to say Aggie! We always have extra blue top milk left after DGD has stayed, so everyone benefits from a lovely batch of scones.

I cut the sprouting bits off the potatoes, just last night, there was nothing wrong with them.
Last Christmas Day, we had potatoes, sprouting ones planted in an old dustbin months earlier. They were delicious.
Waste not, want not, as my mother would say. I'm not mean by using them, I just can't bear waste.

Blimey! Who knew that (acrylamide)? I routinely knock off the sprouts. I hate wasting food. DD will buy a bag of spuds, use some for one meal and then throw them out! I was horrified at this. So now she gives them to me instead (as if I don’t have enough of my own), and I will either part roast and freeze them or mash and freeze them. I’m inclined to agree that unwashed potatoes don’t sprout as quickly. We used to buy ours straight from a farm gate and I don’t remember having the problems we have now.

As Jalima says, there is a danger of introducing disease if you plant potatoes other than from the garden centre. We used to have an allotment and had to give it up through ill health. I do miss the fresh veg.

I will use up wrinkly, sprouting spuds, ditto the odd sad old carrot and leeks/sprouts looking somewhat the worse for wear -I just strip the outer leaves off.
That's what soups are for - at least in this house.

yes , "sad veg " soup used to be a fav here

Full cream milk - personally I can't bear the stuff but we often have some left after Gdcs have visited. If I forget to give it to dd, I just freeze it for next time. Milk freezes perfectly - I often freeze any that's still in the fridge before we go away.
Have to decant into plastic bottles, though - our milk comes in glass from the milkman. Have been known to use dh's cycling water bottles if nothing else available!

We grow potatoes in the community garden so I have become something of an expert know-all I now know about first earlies and maincrop and how to chit.
We have at least 10 favourite varieties in different shapes and sizes. Some floury, some waxy.
However eventually they deteriorate if not planted out. If you decide to plant them, they love manure and compost so grow really well on the compost heap!

My Irish ancestors knew a thing or 2 as tatties are a very easy and productive crop to grow. except when they get blight
I know you must not eat them if they are green or eat the potato apples, ie the fruit which appear after the plants have flowered. It's strange how such a valuable foodstuff is poisonous apart from the root tubors.

Grammaretto - Potatoes are from the same plant family as deadly nightshade. That's why my husband refused to eat them for years, he does now TG.

ps tomatoes are from the same family - solanaceae.

We invested in a potato bag from Lakeland.

We buy only two potatoes at a time for baking, roasting or mash.

That is unless we’re buying a bag of those little Jersey’s or Charlotte’s.

We remove an sprouts before we cook them.

Someone once told me not to keep onions near potatoes at they give off something that makes them sprout.

When its winter temperatures I leave mine outside in the shed. Now it is getting warmer I keep them in the fridge.

Fennel that's right and it includes tomatoes and aubergines but ofcourse deadly nightshade aka atropa belladonna has her uses in medicine and was used as eyedrops to dilate the pupils hence the name beautiful lady
I digress.

It's temperature. Even the coolest corner of our homes is probably warmer than your granny's larder was.
Have you tried the bottom of the fridge?

Just keep them cool and in the dark. Never put uncooked potatoes in the fridge - it does something to the starches to make them more sugary.
HOWEVER, keeping cooked potatoes in the fridge converts the starches into resistant starch which can't be digested so well, so less calorific.

I think supermarkets bag them up so we have to buy them more often as they are going to sprout. I tend to buy a few loose when I need them now. Fed up of throwing them away. When I grew my own they didn't sprout like that- I kept them in dark in garage & they lasted ages.

I only buy organic vegetables and if the potatoes get sprouts I just twist them off. I only buy small bags so I don't get to keep them long as I like potatoes almost every day. It is the green parts of a potato you should not eat.

You can also freeze roast potatoes. This is on the Sainsbury's site: Extra crunchy freeze-ahead roast potatoes.

They don’t stay long enough to start to sprout in our house. Have had a jacket potato for my tea every night for the last four years

I usually take them out of the plastic bags, store in a cool dark place and what happens, the blighters sprout. It's a modern day problem. I do take the sprouts off and use them.

I think that you can freeze mashed potato? (Though I haven't tried this myself. Has anyone done this? ) Like a lot of GNs here, in this household we just cut the sprouting bits off and use spuds as normal.

Buy smaller bags and keep them in the dark

Try to buy loose potatoes. You only buy enough to last a week and these rarely sprout. Often there are too many in the plastic bags and certainly take a long time to finish.

We grow our own which are usually organic, unless we get the dreaded Colorada Beetle (endemic in France), if it's a big infestation we have to use something chemical otherwise we try and keep it under control by hand. I would rather have our treated potatoes if necessary so I know what went on it, rather than lose the crop and have something from the supermarket.

We store them in the dark in the barn in net sacks. they do started to sprout in late winter, but as others say I just knock the sprouts off. When we get to spring if any are left then we plant these and they produce some earlies, they come from seed potatoes from the garden centre and we have never had any sort of problem.