7+ Things To Do With Sprouted Potatoes
Can you eat sprouted potatoes? Yes! Are sprouted potatoes safe to eat? Yes! When you open a bag of potatoes and find they have sprouted, here are more than seven ideas you can do with them (and throwing them out isn’t one). Reduce waste in your kitchen and save the money you’ve spent with one or more of these ideas.
Whenever I find bags of organic potatoes on sale I often buy two, even though I know we don’t typically use a lot of potatoes. You have to take advantage of those sales, right?
However, since organic potatoes are not sprayed with a sprout inhibitor, I am often faced with about quite a few pounds left of sprouting potatoes – sometimes only a week later.
While I try very hard not to throw food away, I also don’t want to eat potatoes for the next week, either, to get them all used up.
I’m pretty sure I’m not the only person ever faced with this problem, so I did a little research and came up with quite a few different ways to use these potatoes before they become shriveled and inedible.
A Few Frequently Asked Questions
This is probably the first question you ask yourself when faced with a half eaten bag of potatoes with sprouts. Yes, you can – as long as the potato is still firm when you give it a slight squeeze and the sprouts are small. Just cut out the sprouts and eyes and proceed with your recipe.
I have always said yes to this question. While there may be more solanine present, sickness from solanine is very, very rare and a few sprouts on a firm potato will not make you sick – and excess solanine is more common in potatoes with a green tint to their skin (source). Also, most solanine is found right under the skin, so peeling the potato before using in one of the ways below would eliminate most. Finally, you’d have to eat a huge amount of potatoes for the solanine to make you sick.
It’s the way potatoes grow. When planted in the ground, the potato tuber’s sprouts will grow up through the soil, becoming green foliage which will be fed by the tuber. As it grows, the original tuber will shrink and become mushy or non-existent, but there will be a lot of new tubers growing all around it from the new plant. It’s the plant’s life cycle.
Conventionally grown potatoes are sprayed with a growth-inhibitor and it’s why you can have a 10-pound bag for longer in your pantry without sprouting. Organics don’t do this, so you have to use them up sooner.
If the potatoes are really wrinkled and shriveled, the starch has turned to sugar (in preparation to feed the plant that is sprouting) and the nutrient value is pretty much gone. And of course if they are mushy, leaking and smell, they are rotten. Any potatoes in these conditions are only good for the garden (wrinkled) or compost pile (rotten).
Storing them in a cool, dark, place will go a long way to keeping them from sprouting as fast. Also, store them away from onions – I know we always see these two stored together, but the onions really will make the potatoes sprout faster.
Do the Potatoes Have Green Skins?
If your potatoes have a green cast to the skin, it means they’ve been exposed to too much light.
This green indication of the presence of solanine, which is considered a toxin (potatoes are in the nightshade family) and may cause some type of sickness (tummy upset, diarrhea), so you should always peel off any green areas of any potato.
Now that we know we can eat them, choose one or more of these ideas below to use them up – after you’ve washed them and cut off all the sprouts or green areas, that is.
And by the way, these ideas all work for that big bag of non-sprouted potatoes you have, too, except for the last idea – then you’d actually want to wait until they’ve sprouted!
7+ Things To Do With Sprouted Potatoes
1. Bake The Potatoes and Freeze
Yes, you can freeze baked potatoes!
How to Freeze Baked Potatoes:
- Bake until fork tender in a 350 degree oven.
- Let them cool and wrap each potato with foil so that no skin is showing.
- Place the wrapped potatoes into a freezer baggie, label, and store for 6 to 8 months.
How to Use Frozen Baked Potatoes, 2 ways:
- You can then thaw the frozen cooked potatoes to use in other recipes.
- Or cook from frozen: pull out how many you’d like to use, unwrap them and place them in a baking dish, frozen. Cover the dish with aluminum foil and bake at 425Ā°F for 35 to 45 minutes or until warm.
2. Make and Freeze Twice Baked Potatoes
This is a variation on the baked potato – after baking, scoop out the insides and mix with cheese, sour cream and seasonings, refill the shells with this and top with grated cheese before baking again (this Twice Baked Potatoes from Simply Recipes is a good one).
How To Freeze Twice Baked Potatoes:
- After filling, but before the second baking, lay the halves on a cookie sheet and freeze completely.
- Transfer to a freezer baggie or container, removing as much air as possible, and freeze for up to 3 months.
- Thaw and bake as normal.
I’ve done this many times and it’s such a treat to have twice-baked potatoes in the freezer!
3. Make Frozen Hash Browns
Bake, grate, and freeze the potatoes like this Freezer Hash Browns recipe from Heavenly Homemakers to use whenever you want!
I love this so much – I’ve just done without hash browns for years because I didn’t want all the extra ingredients that come with store bought packages.
My family is really enjoying these again and it’s very convenient.
4. Make Freezer Home Fries
This is a variation of the grated recipe like #3, except you chop the potatoes into bite-size pieces (skinned or not) to freeze.
How to Freeze & Use Chopped Potatoes:
- Bake potatoes, chop into size you want, spread out on a large baking sheet and freeze for 1 hour or until frozen through.
- Transfer the frozen potatoes to freezer baggies, remove as much air as you can, and freeze up to 3 months.
- When you’re ready to eat, just fry them from frozen with butter, and optional chopped onions, and peppers.
5. Make Mashed Potatoes – Eat Now or Freeze
Make your favorite mashed potatoes – I’m partial to these sour cream garlic mashed potatoes – for dinner and then freeze the leftovers.
How To Freeze Mashed Potatoes:
- Divide the mashed potatoes in meal-sized portions into pans.
- Dot with butter.
- Wrap pans in foil and freeze.
When ready to serve, thaw the pan overnight and heat in the oven for about 30 minutes at 350 degrees, until warmed through.
6. Make a Slow Cooker Soup
Add some of the potatoes, peeled, to a slow cooker with other ingredients to make a hearty soup for dinner, like this Baked Potato Soup from Mama Loves Food.
Bonus: the leftovers of this soup can be frozen, too!
7. Make a Frittata
Make a delicious Potato & Caramelized Onion Frittata for dinner or breakfast. TIP: Plan to use some of the potatoes you baked in #1 for this.
8. Plant them!
If it’s potato planting time where you live, you can plant them – in the ground, in a tall container (like a clean garbage can), or grow bags – anywhere they’ll get a lot of sun.
Since you actually want sprouted potatoes for planting, you’re half way there if you’ve already got them growing sprouts!
Here’s my easy potato planting method (actually a few methods with the updates!) to get you started.
What are your favorite ways to use sprouted potatoes?
Besides tips on using sprouted potatoes, An Oregon Cottage is a place where you’ll find easy, real food recipes, tips to be smart in the kitchen, and using up what we have. See more potato recipes here and more kitchen tips here.
Even More Potato Recipes
Easy Slow Cooker Garlic Scallop Potatoes
This article has been updated – it was originally published in 2012.
If you have a pressure canner, you can can your potatoes! Peel, pack into jars raw, add warm water, salt and when your canning the potatoes cook to the perfect texture!
Great tip, Felicia – thanks!
People seem to think that when you buy potatoes in the winter they have just been dug up.these are all dug up in October.so if you buy in march they
are 5 months old. farmers store these
Correctly.dark and cold.there is no such thing as a fresh potato in the winter contrary to what people think.
I manage a small coffee bar/cafe/bookstore. We make a lot of our winter soups from scratch. Usually I don’t peel potatoes for our soups because I prefer my potatoes unpeeled (and I know it’s more nutritious to use unpeeled potatoes) (and it IS about me, isn’t it, lol??). Anyway. I had a bag of potatoes that was starting to sprout and decided to peel them–just to get the sprouts off, you see? Big Mistake, at least for that particular morning. I was either: too rushed or too unattentive…and ended up taking a huge chunk out of the tip of one of my fingers with the vegetable peeler. I will spare y’all the ensuing icky details!! However, from now on I will either: try to use up potatoes BEFORE they sprout (so as not to vigoursly whack off any more tips of my precious digits) or delegate this particular chore to my staff….’cause obviously peeling sprouted potatoes is not something I can effectively tackle!! So…cautionary tale here: Beware The Sprouted Spud. It is something that challenges (and potentially smacks back at) the best of us!
I will be doubly careful now. š
Most potato peelers have a pointed tip that is designed to remove the eyes of the potatoes. I didn’t know about that feature until after I was married and had a couple of kids. I hope this is helpful.
My mother always went through her potatoes (not sure how often) that were stored for the winter. She would break off the eyes to prevent the potatoes from getting too soft. They were always stored in a burlap sack in the dark root (basement with a mud floor) cellar.