Beating Potato Blight !

It's been an awful year for Potato Blight and many crops across the country have been hit by it. It's devastating and can ruin all your hard work or planting and earthing up, leaving you without a crop and feeling totaly despondant. However, there is an escape route of sorts which will leave you with "some" food at the end of it.

Like many others we got hit by blight this year, but we will still be eating our potatoes up until our first earlies are harvested next year, here's how.

Blight just means that they wont store for very long, eventually rotting. The potatoes are still perfectly edible and when peeling them if the flesh is a blotchy brown or black, then discard it. Dont be tempted to compost the peelings as this will keep the blight active in your garden.

When blight is first detected, cut the foliage from the plants and stack ready to burn...leave your spuds in the ground for a couple of weeks digging up only what you will use that day. After a couple of weeks you can dig them upto store if you think they have escaped. If your not sure they have and you want to go further then get your pots and pans out and start cooking!

You will see many potato products in the supermarket freezers that you can emulate at home, peel and wash some, chip them and blanch for 2 mins in oil at around 140-150 degrees, tip out onto racks to drain and cool, bag and freeze. When required, defrost them and fry in hot oil 180-190 degrees to crisp. The blanching helps retain the flavour of the spud.

For mash or roast potatoes, cut up into the size you want and blanch in boiling water for 3 mins, refresh (cool) in a container under a running cold tap or iced water, bag and freeze. To use, defrost and continue boiling for mash or pop into the oven for roast potatoes.

You can also fully cook potatoes and turn into mash and make that into a duchese mixture which you can then make into other things such as croquette potatoes for instance.

Or if you can buy some of those foil containers from the supermarket that you would normally get at the takeaway, you can slice potatoes and layer them in that. Boil up equal quantities for double cream and milk with a couple of cloves of crushed garlic, and pour the misture over the spuds, then bake for an hour in a medium oven, cool and freeze and you'll have potato dauphinoise ready to defrost and heat through for a meal.

Many more things can be done with your spuds before they rot in storage, a weekends cooking can save your harvest!!

We got blight this year, but we have well and truly beaten it!

Steve...

 

Does anyone have any thoughts or ideas to add?

Steve...

 

Hi Steve, I am not so sure this is as simple as you imply, potatoes cannot be frozen in a raw state and must be thoroughly cooked first or the raw content will turn to black mush when thawed out.
As I understand your instructions you are only blanching the potatoe chips, if I were you I would defrost some to check if they are ok.
If you were to try and freeze a lasting supply you could waste a lot of time and energy costs if the potatoes are not thoroughly cooked. I helped build a frozen baked potatoe factory once and they had no end of problems with resturants complaining that the centres were not cooked and when customers cut open their baked potatoe the centre was a horrible goo.

 

ok, dumb newbie question here..........how do you tell if your growing potato plants have blight?

 

Hi Blacksmith,

I probably need to clarify my cooking terms. As I'm an ex chef, blanching to me means cooking until the "Al Dente" stage, this simply means cooked, but "firm to the tooth"..offering some resistance when it is bitten.

In the case of my frozen chips (approx 10-12mm thick) or frozen roast potatoes (walnut to golf ball sized) 2 mins is enough to achieve that cooked but firm stage. As an adide the potaroes that are boiled actually cooked for a good 30 secs longer as thats the time it takes to fish them out of the pan and place in the iced water.

Larger samples of potatoes would require longer blanching as in the case of the baked potato you mention which would need a lot longer and is unsuitable for what I require as cutting them up allows me to cook them evenly.

It is a valid point though, and so worth mentioning here so others dont fall foul of the situation you mention.

Steve...