Potatoes, spuds, taters, whatever you like to call them, originated from South America. According to Wikipedia, there are a stunning 5,000 different varieties across the world today! Planting potatoes is really not that tricky, but you have to start somewhere, and the “somewhere” might be in selecting which variety you want to grow. The selection is great; -5,000 types, remember? Well, really now, only a very small fraction of these varieties are in reality available to us, and for the most part you only need to worry about which characteristics you want to focus on: Do you want a so-called white potato, red-skin, baking potato, or perhaps a beautiful, yellow Yukon? These taters are all quite different from each other, and some of the main differences are the content of starch versus water. White and red-skin potatoes contain a lot of water and sugar (but are low on starch), and are ideal for soups and stews, and also for potato salads, as they hold their shape well when they are done cooking. For mashing, however, you’ll want a different variety, because potatoes high in water makes for soggy mash. You can’t add much milk as they already contain so much moisture. That brings me to baking potatoes (same as Russet or Idaho), which is the ideal potato for mashing because they are starchy and low in water. Therefore, you can add plenty of milk and get that nice, creamy [...] Read more »