Reply to What the heck is it with the potatoes? Where to buy good ones?

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Reply to "What the heck is it with the potatoes? Where to buy good ones?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]How much do you buy and how long do you keep them before you eat them?

I haven't noticed this but I don't keep them around for long. Probably try not to keep them for more than 2 weeks.[/quote]
I have tried all sizes. For a long while, I would only buy the smallest bag, 5 lbs. But then kids came home from college and I needed more. Last time I bought a huge bag, 50 lbs, in Canada at business Costco, and that same day they were full of black all over them. I separated them all put them in a cold place, we have a large basement here too, and it is not humid, heck it was below 25C outside, and within a week I threw all but 5 away.
There was a period, in MD, when I bought only those potatoes that were not in bags, and those were good for the first few days, that is true.
I am from Europe and when I was young, we used to buy 50 kgs of potatoes, put them in the basement and none rotted. None had black spots. They might have shriveled up a bit but that is about all. Now I get it some of it inside is bruising, but I have run into rot outside and rot inside and then the dark spots in the middle. The problem with the dark spots outside is that they rot fast. I am storing them properly, the issue is I am buying them already rotting on the outside, which means grocers are storing them and transporting them improperly.

[/quote]

Canada. . . is it possible they got touched with frost? That's death to potatoes. 
From farm country. One year when I was unemployed I worked on a harvester. You'd stand on the machine and watch for rocks, lumps of clay, and rotten potatoes as they came up a chain conveyor. This would be well into the fall of course, and if the temp was 32 in the morning or a bit below we'd have to wait in the field till the sun was up enough to get the air temp warmer. In the ground they'd be safe, but one brush of the surface with cold air and its bad news.

I can imagine that since they have to be stored cold but not too cold, wonder if refrigerated trucks sometimes have temp control problems?

They can also get bruised, plus the hand sorting that was still common at the time I speak of (mid-80s) may not happen so much (hand sorting would continue in the farmers' potato warehouses when bagging or loading for shipment). Or not get aerated enough in bulk storage. Once the bad stuff gets going, it gets really bad.

My mom bought 50 lb bags but we were a family of 7 and we ate potatoes almost every night. [/quote]

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