Ingredient Spotlight: Potato

About

Scientific name: Solanum tuberosum
Cultivation: They bear white, pink, red, blue, or purple flowers with yellow stamens. There are about 5,000 potato varieties worldwide. Every part of the plant is dangerous for consumption except the tubers! The part we eat is specifically a stem tuber (despite being called a root vegetable.) Potatoes are the 4th largest food crop in the world.
Potatoes are native to the Americas; most specifically modern day Peru. While they were originally thought to be domesticated separately in many places by Native Americans genetic testing shows that despite the variety of cultivars and native species they can be traced back to a single Peruvian origin, Solanum Brevicaule complex. From there, roughly 7000 to 10000 years ago they were domesticated.

We call potatoes by many names: taters, pederders, spuds etc. but first let’s talk about the origin of the word potato. Potato comes from the Spanish word patata which is a hybrid word of batata (Carribean origin) and papa (Peruvian origin.) Interestingly this word actually refers to both sweet potatoes and what we call potatoes despite them not being that closely related. For quite some time no distinction was made between the two tubers. In fact, what we call potatoes today were referred to as bastard potatoes next to the common potato (sweet potato) in the 16th century by John Gerard.

This is pretty telling of the original view of potatoes in Europe. Imported from the Americas in the 1500s potatoes didn't really take off. The French in particular has a very bad view of them bringing about a law banning them for human consumption in 1748 (not really sure what took them so long if they had such a distaste for them but…) and were thought to be cause of leprosy! Potatoes however were still cultivated and used for animal fodder.

This changed for France during the 7 years war (1756 and 1763), but we’ll talk about that on Sunday!

I would be remiss if i talked about potatoes and didn't mention the Irish Potato Famine (AKA the Great Hunger AKA An Gorta Mor.) The famine began with an infestation of a fungus-like organism, Phythphthora Infestans, in 1845. This blight ruined half of the crop that yeah and only got worse ruining about three quarters of the crop over the next seven years.

This may not sound like a big deal, there was other food right? Well, for the Irish tenant farmers there wasn't really. Currently under the rule of Great Britain these tenant farmers (as oppose to farmers that owned their own land) were required to pay taxes on crops and such and were left with the “poor man’s food,” of potatoes. They were especially important because of their high nutritional content. There is a lot of politics involved in why this was so devastating for the Irish population but needless to say it’s estimated over 1 million lost their lives from starvation and another 1 million fled as immigrants to the Americas and to Great Britain.

The craziest part of the Great Hunger to me is the fact that they were still exporting so much food from Ireland instead of feeding their poor and suffering. Some sources even think that the rate export increased during the famine.

Metaphysical

Correspondences: Feminine, Earth, Moon, Axomamma (Inca goddess)
Grounding, protection, stability, money, luck, healing, sympathetic magic

How to use: you can carve a potato into a poppet for sympathetic magic, kitchen witchery (obviously) potato skins are physically healing and so I would focus on the skins for healing magic, you can carry a potato to absorb negativity around you, green witchery (seed blessing, plant nurturing)

Potatoes are considered spiritually important in some sects of Buddhism. I did find it hard to find something that would corroborate this claim though.

Mundane

These super filling super versatile food comes with some possible added health benefits.

Health: They contain something called a resistant starch. While carbs and starches get a lot of flak this one is special. Resistant starch promotes good gut health! Instead of being completely broken down in the stomach this starch makes its way to the large intestine! Here it provides a great food source for healthy gut bacteria which in turn can not only help you get more from your food it may also help alleviate inflammation in general as well as inflammation caused by inflammatory bowel syndrome and Crohn's disease. This resistant starch has also been linked to improving blood sugar levels by reducing insulin resistance. Note many of these claims require more testing, especially human testing, but it's still fun to know the work that's being done around potatoes.

Some more founded uses include use in biodegradable plastic products, adhesives (in the textile industry)and the manufacturing of papers and boards.

Potato skins and honey are a folk remedy used in India for burns and even burn centres there have experimented with using potato skins to protect burns while they heal.

In the kitchen: So. Versatile.

“Boil ‘em. Mash ‘em. Stick ‘em in a stew,'' if you will. Deep fried, pan fried, baked, roasted. Hot or cold… the list goes on. Then there's all the different ways to cut them: cubes, shredded, sliced thick or thin, square cut (french fries,) lattice cut, and a new one for me, game fries, which apparently are like lattice cut but smaller cross cuts.

My personal favourites are as boiled (I know boring right?) lattice cut and hashbrowns.

Potato starch is also a great product. It can be used to add a stickiness to gluten free all purpose flour blends and as a thickener or binder in soups and sauces (again a great gluten free option.)