I will be posting some of the favorite columns along with new thoughts, recipes, news and general life things. I hope you will enjoy it.
This column originally ran in 2006.
Fried Green Potatoes
A few years ago I was working in a restaurant on the beach in Yelapa. One day I noticed that one of the cooks was cutting potatoes to make French fries. I was alarmed because the potatoes had green spots. I had always heard that because potatoes are a member of the nightshade family, that any green parts of the tuber (that’s the potato) or plant were extremely poisonous. I don’t know why I always believe these things. I guess it’s because I had heard it so many times I assumed that it was true.
I told her that I didn’t want her to use those green potatoes. They are poisonous and would make our customers sick.
She said, “No they won’t. We eat them all the time”.
I said, “Oh, really?”, and she said, “Yes, and I will prove it to you”.
She then took all of the green parts of all the potatoes and made herself some French fries and ate every one of them. I kept her under close observation for the next few hours, but there was no sign of sickness at all. OK, I guess I could be wrong, but I told her I would really like to see her first thing in the morning. I still didn’t really believe. The next day she was still fine. She had cheated death and sickness. Just lucky? Not really. After a little investigating here’s what I found:
The green parts of potatoes, such as sprouts and skin, do indeed contain a toxin called solanine, which is a toxin to be taken seriously in high concentrations, but it turns out that a 200 lb person would have to eat two full pounds of completely green potatoes in one day to take in a toxic level of solanine. That’s a lot of French fries. If you were to eat that many you might expect to experience abdominal pain, nausea, diarrhea, vomiting, confusion, etc. It seems to me one might experience those things if they ate two whole pounds of anything.
One of the reasons that we can get away with eating green potatoes is that newer varieties are genetically tweaked to produce less solanine. Lucky for us. Science is on our side.
The best way to keep your potatoes from turning green is to keep them in the dark in a cool place, and remove green spots and sprouts before cooking, but we don’t have to be fanatical about it.
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