Potatoes are a kitchen staple used in a number of plates. Whether you enjoy them as a meal on their own, baked and loaded up with your topping of choice, they can also be roasted or simply boiled to make for a tasty side.
But when it comes to cooking them, you might notice that your potatoes have turned green and begun to sprout, and while this isn’t necessarily dangerous, it can be unpleasant and leave you feeling sick. Leaving them in the plastic packaging they come in can in fact lead to them going bad faster. Potatoes need proper ventilation and a dry storage environment, but plastic packaging simply traps moisture, spoiling the vegetable. It’s not just moisture that can spoil potatoes, but heat too, and with summer fast approaching, knowing how to keep potatoes fresh in warm weather is essential.
Generally, it’s advised to store potatoes in a cool place, but even if you do keep them in a shady and cooler spot in your kitchen, it can be hard to maintain this in the warmer months.
Potatoes should ideally be stored in a place that doesn’t reach more than 10C in order to preserve their freshness and quality, but you might want to try keeping them in a different spot in the kitchen over the warmer months.
Lucia Washbrook, sales and marketing director at potato brand Nanna Tate, has shared advice on how to preserve the “freshness and quality” of potatoes over summer, preventing any “sprouting” and ensuring you can use them in your favourite recipes.
Warm environments with a lot of light exposure can quickly spoil potatoes. To avoid this, Lucia recommends that you “keep them in a dark place, or use a cotton or hessian storage bag that blocks the light.”
Surprisingly, the sales and marketing director also shared that keeping potatoes in the vegetable section of the fridge is “a great option during the warmer months if a cool cupboard isn’t available”.
Previous advice has warned against keeping potatoes in the fridge as this can cause cold-induced sweetening and increase the formation of acrylamide, a potentially harmful substance, but new research suggests otherwise.
The Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) has found that storing potatoes in the fridge below 5C can extend the shelf life of potatoes, and keep them fresh for up to three times longer.
The peer-reviewed scientific research also found that storing potatoes in the fridge doesn’t increase acrylamide anymore than keeping potatoes in the cupboard.
With an estimated 180,000 tonnes of fresh potatoes going to waste every year according to WRAP, knowing how to store them properly can prevent unnecessary waste and help you get more out of them in the kitchen.
