Best Polish Potato Variety for Mashing

Very nice recipe Johnny and thanks for the homespun wisdom!

My twice baked spuds recipe with cheese, bacon bits are even more fattening.
And you are quite welcome as it is always my pleasure for someone as 'charming' as you Atch. :-)

Popped into Auchan this morning and lo and behold, they have bags of spuds designated for baking and others for boiling, so I'll try each of those varieties and see how it goes. Will attempt a nice fluffy mash on Sunday with the baking variety I think. Will report back on my results. I'm sure you'll all be waiting with suitably bated breath and possibly even sleepless nights in the meantime.

By the way thank you InPolska, it was you who inspired me to investigate Auchan, after your mention of the bags of spuds in Carrefour. Auchan is nearer to me so a bit handier.

@Atch: glad I could help! :) . I go to Auchan only 1 or 2 times a year, completely out of the way for me and also I prefer other stores. It could be something they do in Poland in French stores (at Carrefour, they also have potatoes for salad...). In France, people buy potatoes according to the way they want to prepare them and therefore potatoes are clearly named on labels. Of course rare are the "potatoe experts" but everybody there knows that each kind of potatoes is more or less suitable for such or such a way of cooking. I'm not sure I've seen the same way elsewhere (including in the US).... Believe me, using the right kind of potatoe makes the dish tastier.

It's me above (54789012). I was not logged in so I enter anything ...

Yes it's like that in Ireland too. People are quite fussy about potatoes and they definitely won't just buy a bag of generic spuds. They expect to find certain varieties on offer.


Yes, it's essential. It's just that unless I was cooking for guests, I would just eat it anyway, rather than waste the food. My husband is the same. He'd have a fit if I suggested chucking something in the bin. I think both Irish and Polish people have a horror of waste for different reasons. With Poles, food shortages during communist times and with Irish the weird kind of subconscious, collective 'memory' of the famine probably contribute to the sense that food can't be thrown away.

So now, it's like that too in Ireland! In France it's been like that for ages. In Poland maybe in some 10/20 ....years..... Not only for potatoes but also for everything else, the key to good receipes is the ingredients, they must be of good quality and suitable. Although I can't/don't cook, I know a lot re cooking and also enjoy fancy stuff.

Oh yes, in Ireland too, I think it's always been like that. Certainly my grandmother knew her spuds and was tremendously fussy about them.

oh mine too. At Granny's the potatoes were always served on a side plate, in their skins, for you to skin or not as you pleased.

Then there would always be a long discussion about whether the potatoes were 'floury or soapy'....:)

also difficult in Poland to find huge potatoes suitable for baking. Maybe at Carrefour and consorts... I have never looked in there...

I always ask what kind of potato is in the stew or soup when I eat at a fancy restaurant while in a foreign country.

I want to them to perceive that I come from an affluent United States background to impress everybody.
Back here at home I just go to my garden or root cellar to get my potato's.
I grow the Kennebec and Idaho for my favorite choice to stay away from the store bought which are
sprayed with blight killers, bug killers, pesticides not to mention the chemical fertilizer's they are grown with.
All that added flavor and convenience getting them from the big store for just a little more.

true, Johnny! All the chemical sh..ts they use to grow potatoes and the rest! On top of that, in areas like in Poland, we have soils contaminated by Chernobyl..... This is scarry when we realize what we eat....

Yes, yes, my grandparents lived with us and I grew up listening to lengthy discussions between my mother and grandmother about spuds, meat and the texture of cakes, especially sponge which had to be just the right fluffiness;a sponge that came out 'rubbery' caused great consternation. Even my grandfather would join in 'Mary, what happened with the sponge?' and the post mortem as to why this horror had occurred could go on intermittently for a few days 'God, wasn't it terrible about the sponge? Could it have been the eggs do you think?' The word might even get round the neighbourhood in our little village 'Mary, I hear that coffee sponge was very rubbery but don't worry I didn't say anything to Mrs Hennessey' (or whoever my grandmother/mother's arch enemy was). Soapy potatoes were not favoured at all in my house anyway and it was quite likely that a greengrocer would never be visited again if the potatoes weren't up to scratch.


Ha, ha! But it's nothing pretentious with the Irish. Our national cuisine is very simple but the potato always formed such a major part of it I suppose it meant a lot to people.

LOL ha ha ha , I can just imagine. those grannies would never have had a shop bought cake or biscuit would they?

I must say I do like the Polish spud for mashing, my ex MIL would make a lovely fried pork dish with a sauce that would go over the mash.

No butter or milk for her!

My grandmother never, and my grandfather wouldn't have tolerated it! He suffered greatly with his digestion as they used to say and wouldn't touch anything except my granny's or my mother's home cooking. My mother though, would buy cakes in the shop from time to time, but from a proper cake shop/bakery, not from the supermarket. She once told me of a bakery my granny used to frequent run by two spinster sisters who had studied the art of pastry making and confectionery in France and Italy. The cakes were 'magnificent' and you should hear the passion she put into that word! And when they died, she concluded, investing the words with the greatest drama, 'the recipes died with them' her voice sinking to a whisper of despair for the loss of such magnificence.

It is exactly the same in England too.
Most types of potatoes are named on the bag, but even those just labelled 'white potatoes', will have a label stating what type of cooking the potatoes are best suited for.

Those labels boil down to (no pun intended) how much starch is in each variety.
Obviously you don't want a lot of starch in a baking potato.
The ones full of starch (waxy) are the ones they suggest for mashing, boiling and frying.
My sister always insists on buying the biggest potato's she can find with them weighing close to a half a pound each.
Then she brings them home and cuts them in half or thirds.
I poked fun at her about it and she said the bigger potato's seem to have less starch in them.
She is just like you charming girls are and "politely" straightened me out. lol
Yukon Gold's cost the most so they must be the best.

The waxy potatoes are the ones with the least amount of starch in Johnny, so they are good for boiling and potato salads, whereas floury ones are better for mash. Have a quick read of this :-

suttonelms.org.uk/pot18.html

Personally I don't even like potatoes, but I've had to cook loads for other people over the years.

Thank you for correcting me as my memory in my old age fails me occasionally.
As I posted earlier in this thread, if I want spuds for dinner either mashed, fried or boiled I go out to
my root cellar and grab some.
On the way back into the house I thank the Lord for blessing me with them.

Make a promise, keep a promise, so here I am. Sadly you must remain in a state of agonised suspense as I ended up making dumplings, rather than mash. They were very nice dumplings actually with dijon mustard and herbs. However, in an interesting twist to the potatoe crisis, when I asked my husband about the best potatoes for mashing he responded in typical Polish fashion 'the cheapest'. He refuses to spend double the amount per kilo for the baking variety and insists that it is possible to make floury spuds from any variety if they're cooked 'properly'. He plans to demonstrate this feat of alchemy next weekend so stay tuned for futher updates.

Didn't I post the same exact thing back in post #30 ?


I bet your husband and I even look alike. :-)
Bless our Polish heritage.

Bless me Father for I have sinned. I disobeyed my husband and bought Amerykanki as suggested by Polonius. (You see what a bad influence you are Polly??) Anyway I didn't mash them because we didn't want mash that day, but I have to say they're the best so far. Nice flavour and not as soapy as the other varieties. Not in the same league as Irish Roosters but a reasonable substitute. Honesty compels me to admit that my husband was with me at the time, so I didn't really disobey him, I was given the green light but that's alright - I put he disobedience on account and save it up for another occasion. I'm sure there will be plenty of opportunities! I will report again when I eventually get round to mashing them.

For my penance I have said five Hail Marys and am providing the following info FYI:
As I have said, the most typical Polish mash is plain mash with no milk, cream or butter, however I have encountered what I call country-style mash: after the potatoes are drained and steamed dry, add some skwarki (pork fatback nuggets fried golden brown) to the pot and mash into the taters. Optional: a bit of minced onion may be browned with the skwarki. Bacon nuggets give it a smoky flavour. In poor rural families that is a meal in itself with a bowl of cold soured milk (zsiadłe mleko) on the side.

In our home the most common way of serving potatoes as a main-course accompaniment is boiled whole or broken up a bit, dotted with butter and garnished generously with fresh or frozen fine chopped dill. (In season we wash and chop fresh dill, pack it into glass jam jars with twist-off lids and freeze it until needed. Almost like fresh and certainly much better than the dry dill weed found in supermarket spice and seasoning aisles).

Yes, my husband used to eat the mashed potatoes with onion and zsiadłe mleko when he visited his great grandparents farm. He still likes to eat that combination in summer sometimes. He also loves potatoes with koperek.

Sound to me like he knows a good potato when he eats one.
Nothing beats a good potato when however you cook one with a green vegetable and sprinkle some cheese over it.
Sweet potato's even open a new door for potato's.
Do you have those in Europe ?

A few years ago no-one in Poland had heard of sweet potatoes or yams, but now you can find them in major supermarkets. They're sometimes called bataty in Polish.

Even Biedronka has them. Nicer baked than anything else. Certainly not mashed - it reminds me of early 70s UK school,dinners during the year there was a potato shortage.

Here in the south we make sweet potato pie with brown sugar.
You can google the recipe's.
Have you ever sliced them very thin and baked them crisp like a potato chip. Yummy !
Very healthy for you.
They remind me of a sweet squash of a kind when boiled.

That sounds lovely. I might try that.

@Ash, my goodness me! You are still on your .... potatoes!!!! ;) "lol"