'Taters, Precious... planning for the yield

Saturday, we went to our local mushroom grower (mushroomery?) and picked up a truckload of organic mushroom compost. Only $25 a scoop... very reasonable. (Especially since bagged organic garden soil (and even bagged mushroom compost) from the local Home Depot is expensive. The cheapest price was about $2 for a cubic foot.)

Why did we buy compost? Because we don't have enough of our own homemade compost to do the job.

How much compost did we need? The entire truckload. We had enough seed potatoes to plant over 40 'tater tires, with 4 seed potatoes per tire. That takes a lot of compost, even though we mixed our own compost with the 'shroompost and even threw in some mulched up leaves for added fluffiness.

Projected harvest yield: About 800 pounds of potatoes.

Yeah.

800 pounds of potatoes.

That's about $1,500 worth of potatoes (comparing to equivalent organic potatoes from the grocery store).

Come mid-summer, we're gonna be up to our eyeballs in potatoes. Take that, big gummint!

Of course, the next question is: What are we gonna do with all them 'taters?

Boil 'em, mash 'em, stick 'em in a stew? (Ha ha, couldn't resist!)


Actually, it isn't too far from the truth.

For basic storage, you need dark, cool, and dry. A basement "root cellar" works best. I, unfortunately, don't have a basement. But I do have a crawlspace. We've converted the crawlspace under our house into a root cellar.

It's a real high-tech installation. Just kidding. We took plastic milk crates and put them in the crawlspace. When the potatoes are harvested, we'll set the potatoes in a single layer on top of the crates. They'll be just fine as long as we follow these rules:

Keep 'em out of the sunlight
Keep 'em away from humidity
Keep 'em away from onions and apples

I will be canning quite a lot of them, especially new potatoes. (See this previous post for info on canning potatoes.)

And besides canning the potatoes by themselves, I'll also include them in various canned soups and stews.

There are several ways you can prepare potatoes for freezing:

French Fries. Wash, peel, and cut into 1/4-inch slices. Cut slices into 1/4-inch strips, to resemble french fries (actually more like steak fries than shoestring potatoes). Soak the fries in cold water for 5 minutes, drain them, and let them dry on a towel. Fry the potatoes in hot oil until they are pale and gold in color. Spread them out on a baking sheet and freeze until just chilled. Package the chilled fries compactly in freezer boxes, leaving 1/2-inch head space. Place cartons in freezer. Or, you can put them in freezer bags (I prefer vacuum seal bags) and freeze.

Mashed Potatoes. Mashed potatoes can be frozen in pint or quart containers for up to 4 to 6 months. Mashed potatoes can also be formed into patties ("Tater Cakes") and packaged in layers between sheets of freezer paper. You don't even have to thaw them out before heating--you can brown them in a skillet or in the oven while frozen.

Baked Potatoes. Baked potatoes by themselves don't freeze well. They lose their original texture and consistency. Twice-baked potatoes do much better in the freezer. Cut baked potatoes in half and scoop out the pulp. Mash the potato pulp and mix it with milk, butter, and seasonings, and refill the potato halves. Wrap each half with freezer paper or aluminum foil and store in freezer. Bake frozen baked potatoes in oven at 325 degrees for 30 minutes. They can be stored in the freezer for 4 to 6 months.

I'll also be dehydrating potato slices in a food dehydrator.

Peel and slice potatoes. Blanch in boiling water for five minutes. Then cool in a water/lemon juice solution for 45 minutes to prevent darkening. Pat dry and put in the dehydrator according to manufacturer directions.

Some good dehydrated potato recipes can be found here.

But the coolest thing I'll be doing with the potatoes?

Making potato flour.

It's really easy.

Grind/puree/grate potatotes. LEAVE THE SKINS ON! (I use a food processor.)

Wrap the potato mash in a flour sack towel or a few layers of cheesecloth. Place over a large bowl to drain off liquid.

When drained, run clean water through the mash and drain again. Squeeze the potatoes (in the cloth) to drain out as much liquid as possible.

Dry out pulp in a food dehydrator (or an oven at low temp) or even in a microwave.

Grind dried pulp in a blender, food processor or mill until it resembles flour. What's left is potato flour.

There are a lot of good gluten-free recipes that call for potato flour, as well as a lot of American-Jewish recipes. Here's a good potato flour sponge cake recipe to get you started (it's also low fat)!