What makes the Idaho potato famous? Longevity, for one. According to the state Department of Agriculture, Presbyterian Missionary Henry Spalding planted the first potatoes in Lapwai in 1836. That’s 190 years of potatoes! Our environment is also unique: potatoes grow much better in our part of the state with warm days, cool nights, fertile volcanic soil, and irrigation water. Idaho is the largest potato producer in the U.S. with one-third of the total national crop. We may grow the most but we would have to eat 55 spuds a day to consume all we grow!

Potatoes are rated with the #1s used mainly for baking; they are frequently exported out of state and out of country. If you’ve ever eaten in an expensive restaurant on either coast, you may be surprised to discover baked Idaho potatoes and Buhl rainbow trout on the menu. They are expensive delicacies! The #2 spuds go to processing plants like J.R. Simplot and Lamb Weston to be converted into french fries. Americans consume 5.6 billion pounds of french fries a year or about 20 pounds per person. Potatoes rated below #2 are considered culls and cannot be sold. They are used for cattle feed or industrial uses that extract the starch. By the way, our Idaho Russets are not used for potato chips as the starch content is too high. A few specialty brands do use Russets for making kettle chips and leave the skins on….mmmmm!

Our potatoes are so famous that the tagline is on our license plates. There is an Idaho Potato Museum in Blackfoot. The Big Idaho Potato Truck tours the nation and just returned to Idaho in time for Idaho Potato Days at the Idaho Botanical Garden in Boise this past weekend. That’s when the new Guinness record for largest serving of french fries was established at 1,474 pounds.

I will be celebrating Idaho Potato Days by shipping the biggest box of spuds I can carry to my cousins in Nebraska. They will welcome the spuds with the same enthusiasm as if they were gold bars. Never seeing an Idaho spud in a local grocery store or restaurant, Midwest residents drool at the thought of eating a #1 baker. The small supply I can mail to the cousins are carefully divided for each household. One year I took the spuds with me on a visit to Nebraska. A younger cousin eyed me suspiciously: “Are those potatoes in that brown grocery bag?” she asked. She didn’t let the bag out of her sight for the remainder of the visit.

I don’t blame her. I could eat potatoes at every meal. The Irish survived for years on a mostly potato diet and then had to move here when a blight destroyed their potato crop. Good thing they brought their Irish stew recipe with them!

-Priscilla Martens

Photo courtesy of the Idaho Potato Commission