I used to look forward to the first mess of new potatoes from Pap’s big garden. Granny would grabble some early small ones out and fix them. My they were so good!
We’re limited on space for gardening so we don’t have the option of planting the long rows of potatoes that Pap did, but for the last two summers we’ve planted them in containers.
The potatoes grow very well, but we don’t really end up with enough for longterm storage.
This year we planted two different batches of potatoes. We bought seed potatoes and planted them and a couple of weeks later one of The Deer Hunter’s friends gave him some that were leftover from his potato planting.
We did manage to can the first ones we harvested and have really enjoyed the ease of opening a jar of potatoes that are already cooked. They’ve been especially handy for adding to pot roasts.
The second round of potatoes we planted didn’t produce as much as the first ones. We got enough to fill a five gallon bucket about halfway.
I cooked up some of the smallest ones for the girls’ birthday dinner.
My favorite way to cook new potatoes is to scrub the dirt off of them and boil in salted water for about ten minutes. Drain well. Using the tines of a fork I gently scrape up the outsides of the potatoes a little bit. Toss with melted butter and olive oil, spread out on a baking sheet, season to taste with salt and pepper, and bake at 425 for about 45 minutes. I usually turn them over about halfway through.
I love the freshness of the new potato taste and also the way the thin skin crisps up around the edges. So good!
The girls were blown away by all the birthday wishes! Thank you so much for making their day extra special 🙂
Last night’s video: We LOVE Living in Appalachia! The First Airish Weather, Heater Wood, and Being Self-Sufficient.
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Yum! Them roasted potatoes look delicious!
Happy Birthday to the girls! I was busy yesterday, so my wish to them is late.
My mother would always “steal” some little potatoes from the eventual harvest to either cream with peas or cook with some of the first green beans. We didn’t have the word ‘grappling.’ Occasionally I buy some of the fingerling potatoes. They are not as good as home grown, really fresh potatoes, but I don’t have a garden anymore. I parboil them as you do. After they are partially cooked, I hit each of them with a meat mallet so that the skins and flesh are broken and bake them as you do, in butter and olive oil. Breaking the potatoes allows some of the inner potato to crisp up just as the broken skin does.
I have never canned potatoes, but I have bought commercially canned potatoes. I think they are horrible because they taste of citric acid–even if you wash them. Not my cup of tea in any case.
I so much enjoy your posts. I look forward to them every day
Roasted potatoes are so good!
I have seen some of the cooks on the cooking programs boil the potatoes almost tender and then smash them down with a potato masher and roast. Haven’t ever tried it but it sure looks good as yours do. Love taters best of all!
I am thinking of Shirl and her comment about the tater bugs. In the late 50’s and early 60’s my granddaddy would take a stubby broom straw broom and brush liquid arsenic on his potato plants to kill the bugs and other insects. He probably used it for other things too. He would mix the arsenic with water in a 5gal. bucket- the one he use was a used 5 gal lard can that had previously been used to store the lard made when a hog was killed. He had made a handle for it. Back then cotton was king around my area. The farmers had a sprayer mounted on the back of open cab tractors and would spray DDT on the cotton fields. They would not wear any protective clothing, only their everyday work clothes. There would be a cloud of dust over them and the cotton fields and the smell would be the air at night. If it was so harmful why would there always be quail, rabbits and other birds around the fields that had ate the insects killed by the poison? I don’t know how anyone of my generation have lived to be the age we now are when today’s experts say so many of the things we did back then will now harm or kill us. I was always told cotton poison was DDT and it was also sprinkled underneath houses for termites.
Nothing like a plain boiled potato with a fried pork chop and pan gravy – the creamed one with lots of pepper. oh it’s heaven!
Roasting them with fresh Rosemary is good too with the obligatory oil, salt, pepper.
Roasted new potatoes are so delicious and easy to prepare but I have to say like Randy said, give me some small new potatoes cooked in a pot of fresh greens beans with country ham, cornbread and some sweet tea. What a feast!!
I really love roasted new potatoes. I never boiled them first, gonna try that
Would you be willing to share how you canned the potatoes
Patricia-this is the first year we’ve ever canned them. Maybe when we gain more experience I will share. There are several videos on YouTube you can check out. There is one where they don’t put any liquid in the jar. That is not recommended by canning experts, but I hope to try it as the ladies who shared say it’s a better more firm potato 🙂
We love eating new potatoes and roasting them is one of our favorite ways to enjoy them.
I planted potatoes in our garden using straw to “hill” them up. I was not impressed with the results. The potatoes didn’t do well and voles ate about half of our crop that we did get. So next year I thought I would try growing them in some sort of containers. I need to figure out how to get rid of the voles. They run in mole tunnels and while our cat loves to catch and eat them, she’s soon to be 18 years old and I think she’s decided to go into kitty retirement! I don’t want to put out poison, which I know would work, but my cat may end up eating one that has been poisoned which would be detrimental to her.
You can make anything interesting, even a potato! Besides wilted lettuce, one of my best memories of food would be a big bowl of creamed new potatoes or creamed fresh corn I could never eat cream canned corn, but my mom’s creamed corn shaved right off the ear was a real treat. I don’t grown corn anymore because of critters and space, but occasionally still have to make a bowl of creamed corn. No family ever seems to appreciate how good it is, so I suppose I am enjoying a lot of memories cooked in.
The food we eat growing up will always be the best ever. Many children nowadays seem addicted to the over seasoned fast food, and they won’t touch a vegetable. Oh, Tipper, we always called it graveling potatoes, and Miss Cindy mentioned grappling. We Appalachians have a way with language and food. 🙂
My potatoes looked like I would have a bumper crop until the tater bugs (Colorado Beetles) found them late in the season. I saved the vines for a little while by hand picking and spraying those little tormentors from Colorado and the taters turned out ok. Mom boiled her new taters for a few minutes and then fried them. She didn’t do anything special but I have never been able to duplicate the taste. Taters are not very big when green beans are ready in July. We still gravel a few to cook with the first mess of beans. Those small taters are now called a variety of fancy names in the grocery store and the price for a one-pound bag is outrageous.
I always have some volunteer potatoes come up after I have dug the original planting. I just leave them if they aren’t too much in the way and let them do what they can until frost gets the tops. Then sometime along in there I dig in them again and get some nice fresh ‘new’ potatoes which are a real treat along about Thanksgiving. They don’t have time or – usually – a lot of water but they make small potatoes. This year though I made a mistake and planted lettuce in my two potato rows after I had dug the potatoes. Now I have potato sprouts all through my lettuce bed and I have to choose. Worse, I only ended up with about a dozen lettuce plants.
I’m not very surprised that Corie & Katie got a lot of well wishes yesterday. I find it interesting though that many more posted than usual. Not sure what lessons there are to learn in that but I am sure there are some, in addition I mean to the revelation that we here care about them and always wish them well. Very glad they had that pleasant surprise.
The way you cooked those new potatoes sure dose sound delicious. I really enjoy them cooked like that. In fact, I love potatoes cooked most any way. I guess it’s the Scots Irish in me!
I no longer plant potatoes but remember when I did . We liked to add the small new potatoes to a pot of (hopefully fresh) green beans cooked with a chunk of fatback or even better a leftover country hambone . Add some good hot cornbread and a mason jar of sweet ice tea and this old boy will think he is in hog heaven.
We would usually plant seed potatoes but would also plant store bought potatoes that had begin to sprout eyes on them. I never noticed much difference between the two. One seemed to produce as well as the other.
When we were growing up, Mom always creamed new potatoes out of the garden. I still do when we have new potatoes.
Yum, Tipper!!!! Potatoes are literally my favorite vegetable and salted new potatoes are wonderful! Murrman’s family makes them in NY during tater harvesting time!!! That’s the first I ever had them! The ones you made look really a bit crunchy, buttery and delicious!!! Btw what I called lady slipper- you taught me is jewel weed last year so my bad but it still looks like tiny slippers to me hence my own silly name. But I am learning be it ever slow, Tipper…
My grandmother used to call it grappling potatoes when digging out those first early little new potatoes to have for dinner. Tipper with your limited space you certainly manage to grow a lot of vegetables!
My husband and I loved “hanging out” with you and Matt last night while you enjoyed the airish weather. It is airish here in Boone too, and I love it. I SO agree with Matt about hot weather. Happy birthday to the girls!
Fresh, homegrown potatoes are really a treat & something I won’t be without. I harvested about 5 1/2 bushels this year & they are good sized russets and red pontiacs. The russets are bigger than my hand (most of them). This will just about last us til next springish. I have letters saved that my great grandmother Dixon wrote to her so, Chuck, while he was serving in Alaska during the Korean War. She talks about harvesting and storing 30 BUSHELS in our dinky little cellar. I look around down there & can not for the life of me figure where she kept them. My Uncle Chuck used to say that it was his job when he was little to go down & dig through the taters to pull out any bad ones. This was to keep the rest from spoiling. I guess they had some big box, or hopper, built down there to store them in. I used to tease him & tell him he could still have his old job – I’d pay him a quarter for every bad one he pulled out. At 90 yrs old, he didn’t want to take me up on the offer. I wonder why? He passed away 2 years ago & I miss him dearly. He only lived 2 houses away from me & I cleaned for him. When I was done, we would sit and talk. He was the last of my grandad’s siblings left (except for 1 sister who lives in Arizona) and had all sorts of great stories. The one recurring theme of his, was that he was ‘never going to be no plow boy’ when he grew up. No farmer for him – he’d had enough of that. He kept his word, he was a telephone co. worker instead & never even had a vegetable garden.
Patty, my parents home did not have a basement or cellar but was high enough off the ground to easily get underneath their home. We would spread our Irish or arsh potatoes out on the ground and store them like that. We would also check for bad ones. Storing sweet potatoes was completely different.
They are two special ladies. I also planted potatoes and got quite a few. I did plant more of the small red one, also called ‘new potatoes’ and the yield was about the same. I didn’t can the white ones, but did can the red ones as they were small enough. I know that is what is called ‘rogue’ canning, but a pint of potatoes with a pint of green beens is a good ‘side’ for almost any other either meat or veggie. I am thinking about planting some ‘fingerling’ red and white next year. Take care and you know you have started me on those popsicles, you two make them look soooo good. God Bless
One of my fondest garden memories from when I lived in Iowa was digging up potatoes in a snowstorm while it thundered. I love potatoes in every way you can think of to fix them. They are pretty much something I eat everyday. I love your recipe in this post. Thank you!
Donna. : )