Although there are numerous potato variations out there, this post compares the two most popular: the red and the russet (or brown) potato. Of course both types have their advantages over the other, but in the end they’re both still just good ol’ tasty spuds. They both will bake, fry, mash, roast, steam, and eventually be eaten. In other words, don’t lose sleep tonight wondering if you purchased the right ones. But if you are losing sleep over it (really?), maybe this little guide can be your Tylenol PM.
Red Potatoes
These tasty spuds…
Russet Potatoes (The Brown Ones)
These multi-purpose spuds…
Nutritional Data
For Both Types
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I’m a huge potato fan and only recently discovered the difference between these two types of potatoes for myself. The red potato does hold up better for soups and potato salads. But,there is nothing better than a good Russet potato fried in bacon grease with a good sprinkling of yellow onions! Yum! Goes great with cornbread and navy bean soup.
We grew potatoes in our garden as kids, and stored them with other foods Mom put up down in a cool cistern in our basement that we converted into a food storage room (complete with a heavy meat-locker style door).
Each spring, we gathered up what was left of the potatoes we hadn’t used that winter. They were stored in gunny sacks. Most of them had sprouts bursting from the potatoes’ eyes.
Then we cut them up into pieces, making sure each piece had an eye, hopefully with a sprout, and planted them in our dark Minnesota soil with the eye facing towards the sky. They grew into hundreds of potatoes by autumn.
Harvesting potatoes is a hard, dirty job. You have to dig deep into the hard soil with a heavy spade, and dig out the potatoes by hand. Then you have to lay them out to let the damp soil dry, which makes it easier to clean. Yuck! I hated it as a kid, but we sure had a lot of great food to eat in the house!
i personally like the flavour of red potatoes better and buy them most of the time. they cost more but its well worth it for the flavour.
My wife is on a low carb diet for type 1 diabetis.
When I have served her white potato (boiled then fried) her blood sugar stayed normal.
I preboiled some russetts then fried some the next day and she had a sharp rise in her blood sugar.
Am trying to find out why and what the differences are.
That’s an interesting observation. White potatoes, from my understanding, actually have more sugars per serving than a Russet potato. However if potatoes are refrigerated or otherwise get too cold, their starches turn into sugars. It’s possible that the russet potatoes had at some point in the process had this happen. Can anyone offer a more in-depth explanation and shed some additional light on the subject?
The russetts were refrigerated after cooking but I have been storing the white potatoes in the fridge before cooking.
The problem is more carbohydrate than sugar (which is a carb).
The russetts appear to be much more starchy which has a heavy impact.
Hope to get more information as there are few things she can or will eat. For now she has sworn off potatoes which are a favorite.
So green tinted skin means the potato is starting to spoil but you can still eat it? A friend once told me that you shouldn’t eat the green so I started always peeling the green skin off, but I’d much rather eat it, it’s my favorite part! Most bags of potatoes I buy are already turning green, and I’m in Idaho! I only feel like my potatoes are fresh when I’m getting the, from my garden, but
. . . They never last long. Anyway, I’ve wondered about the green skin for a while . . . Maybe I’ll start eating it again! Thanks! :)