Purple Potatoes

One of the treats in the CSA delivery last week was purple potatoes. I had not seen a purple potato, and thought I'd share. According to Farmer John, these are called Adirondack Blue Potatoes.


Here they are alongside some regular old white Kennebec potatoes.


Kind of pretty inside.


The color might have faded a little in cooking, but they remained, quite definitely, purple.



Here they are mashed, right before I gobbled them up. Because of the color, I think I expected a difference in taste. It felt like maybe they were a bit firmer than the white potatoes after the same amount of cooking time, but that might have been my imagination. However, without looking, I wouldn't have know that my mashed potatoes were purple rather than white. They seem to mash the same.

According to a February 2008 article in Gourmet magazine, Adirondack Blues are a hybrid potato created by a Cornell Scientist in 2003. It was bred for its taste -- tested in kitchens -- rather than for storage ability and french fry-ability as most modern day hybrids.

Did you know that in the typical American Diet, the potato is the second highest source of vitamin C?

I could not find any specific nutritional facts on the purple potato, but it is considered to be high in anti-oxidants and according to a geneticist at the US Department of Agriculture, the purple potato retains 75% of their antioxidant capacity when cooked.