Blue Potato

A couple of weeks ago, I made a dill potato salad. Two weeks later, I made something that required dill weed, but then i found myself with some leftover dill weed in my fridge and I didn't know what to do with them. So I went out to buy some potatoes. Instead of buying a 5lbs bag of potatoes that would take us forever to finish, I decided to indulge in those little bags of new potatoes. I figured I wouldn't need to peel them and it would save me time. I had a choice of regular yellow new potatoes, new red potatoes, or a bag of what they called "mixed gems". It had a mixture of yellow, red, and blue potatoes. I've never bought blue potatoes before. The putside of the potato was a very dark blue/purple...I figured it's the same thing as red potatoes. The color must only correspond to the skin and not the flesh.



When I got home, I got to work. I rinsed my potatoes and I had a pot of water waiting to be boiled. When i got to one of the blue potatos, I cut it and I step back for a moment. The flesh was purple (or blue). It tasted the same as any other potato, but felt a little more dry and mealy than the red and yellow ones. It made an interesting presentation for my dill potato salad.



So I proceeded to google "Blue potato" to find out more about this vegetable. The potato is know by many names, one website called it All Blue. Most authorities suspect All Blue originated in the US or the UK (Scotland) in the late nineteenth century. It is also known as Congo, Blue Marker, Russian Blue, British Columbia Blue, McIntosh Black, River John Blue, Sharon's Blue. Also, probable synonyms: Blue Congo, Congo Blue, Purple Congo, Nova Scotia Blue, Himalayan Black. Black Russian, Davis Purple, Eureka Purple, Fenton Blue, and Purple Mountain. It is believed to be originated from South America. They’re an heirloom variety which means they’re not genetically modified.



All Blue is by far the most widely grown of all blue/purple-fleshed varieties. In Great Britain and Europe, it is well known as Congo and Blue Marker. It is popular in Scandinavia, especially in Finland, where it is served mashed with sour cream. Terra Chips uses it to make its famous blue potato chips. Many references state that All Blue yields small tubers, and indeed these are commonly found in supermarkets. However, if allowed to grow to maturity, All Blue easily produces large, oblong tubers quite suitable for baking and mashing. All Blue is currently being studied in Europe and North America to determine its capacity to fend off human disease and aging with the antioxidants in the natural blue pigments of its flesh and skin.