The traditional Australian dinner consisting of meat and three vegetables always included potatoes. Now that we’re eating more pasta and rice, things have changed. We eat fewer potatoes with meals, and more as fatty snack foods like chips and crisps.
But aren’t potatoes fattening?
It’s almost impossible to get fat by eating potatoes, because they have virtually no fat. However, chips and crisps have loads of added fat. 100g of hot chips have 20g of fat, while 100g of potato crisps have 28g of fat. Potatoes are best eaten simply as potatoes.
‘Real’ new potatoes
The potatoes we normally buy as new potatoes are really just washed small potatoes from a regular crop. Some growers are now producing varieties of genuine new potatoes which are dug while the top of the plant is still green, rather than waiting for the foliage to die down. They are small and young, with a waxy texture and a much more intense flavour.
How to use the new varieties
Heat an oven tray, add a little olive oil, place potatoes on the tray and shake to coat with the oil. Bake for about 20 minutes.
Pop them in the microwave, and in a couple of minutes you’ll have a filling, healthy snack that tastes good all by itself. The waxy texture of the new varieties makes them very good for microwaving, which means better retention of vitamins.
They don’t need to be peeled. Just cook them, or wet them and rub off the skin.
The Idaho is great for baking, and the Spunta is an excellent mashing potato.
(Tip: for added nutritional value, let these waxy potatoes cool before you eat them. That way their starch passes to the large intestine where it functions as extra high quality dietary fibre.)