The 2009 great potato bake-off

This year I trialled ten potato varieties.

Last winter I was offered a veggie garden plot in a friend's nearby backyard. That doubled the veggie garden space I had at the time. I decided at the time to dedicate that plot to potatoes, which gave the space to trail these varieties. I decided to go with two collections from the Organic Gardening Catalogue: a collection of four blight-resistant varieties, and their "Cook's collection". I also had pink fir apple potatoes which had been given to me as a gift. That meant I had the following varieties:

Early: Colleen and Orla
Second early: Ambo and Cosmos
Early maincrop: Desiree
Late maincrop: Arran Victory, Robinta, Valor and Isle of Jura
Salad: Pink Fir Apple

The Colleeen and Orla were the first out of the ground. Colleen is an Irish first early with a white skin and light yellow flesh. Orla is also a white-skinned potato. We couldn't really tell them apart as they came out of the ground. They're both supposed to fry well, and we found they performed really well roasted or boiled and then fried into curries. They both produced prolific small potatoes, yielding about 5 kg for each kg planted.

Next to come out were the Ambo and Cosmos. I don't have photos of these as we ate them as they came out. Ambo are really pretty, part-red tubers and gave a good yield of good-sized potatoes which roasted really well. The Cosmos are a waxy white potato which also roast well.

Of the lates, from left to right in the picture below are Isle of Jura, Robinta/Desiree, Valor, Arran Victory and Pink Apple Fir:


Isle of Jura provides oval tubers and is supposed to have a white skin and yellow flesh, although I found mine to develop interesting brown patches. It has a high eelworm and moderate blight and scab resistance. The yield on these wasn't large compared to the other varieties. This was the firmest feeling of all the potatoes when cut.

Desiree and Robinta merged into each other in the collecting. They both have pink skin, while Desiree has white flesh and Robinta cream flesh. Desiree are good roasters while Robinta are supposed to be good boiled with a distinctive flavour, so it will be interesting to see if I can tell the difference as I cook them. The two of these together produced as many potatoes as three of the other varities, so both were heavy-yielding, producing the largest potatoes of the year.

Valor matures between early and late maincrop and is a white potato with white flesh. It doesn't feel as crisp as the others to cut. The yield was pleasingly large, with a good number of medium-sized potatoes. It was the only variety which gave any indication of less than perfection however, with some scabbing on the skin. Not enough to worry me.

Arran Victory is an old variety dating back to the 40s. It has a vivid blue-purple skin and white flesh and is a quite floury potato with some resistance to blight. It has a lovely crisp feel when cut. It yielded especially well this year.

Pink Fir Apple is a long waxy salad potato. These produced a very small crop (2kg for 700g planted) compared to the others.

Cut open, it's easy to see the difference in colour between the different varieties. L-R, Valor, Desiree, Isle of Jura, Arran Victory and Pink Fir Apple. You can really see the stunning skin on the Arran Victory in this shot, and the creamy colour of the flesh.


Some of these are better suited to boiling and mashing than roasting, but the point of last night's exercise was to see how well they roasted. So to that end I cut each potato into eighths and tossed them with a little olive oil, salt and pepper and baked them for an hour. Here they are in the same order as the previous photo. There is a lot of potato there, but this was enough for wo meals.


Interestingly, the skin colour of the potatoes disappeared during the roasting (they retain more of the colour when boiled). The skins of all the potatoes went a roasted potato-golden-brown once they were out of the oven. I served them up with a little roasted salsify and scorzonera, and some Bravas sauce made from green and partially ripe tomatoes pulled from the garden.

The results probably aren't surprising. The Pink Fir Apple and Isle of Jura potatoes which are both salady or boiling types were roasted to overcrisp by the time the hour was out (but a Pink Fir Apple piece I tasted afterhalf an hour had been delicious and perfectly cooked, so they may be a good option for roasted potato cravings without enough time to bake them properly).

The tastiest roasted potato was the Arran Victory, followed so closely by Valor and Desiree that there wasn't enough in it to worry about.

The reason for this analysis was to figure out which varieties I want to keep and which I want to drop for next year. At the moment, I'm leaning strongly towards changing nothing and growing all of them again! It's easy to order the two collections of foru potatoes and I love the Arran Victory, so at the moment the only one I could consider leaving out would be the Pink Fir: but I haven't tried boiling them and turning them into salad or a flash-fried curry yet. I have ~30kg of potatoes in the shed at the moment however and we're away for a good chunk of the winter, so it remains to be seen whether we're growing too many.