I love boiled new potatoes, drained, and dressed with a cube of butter, snipped chives, parsley (I use kitchen scissors for the task), and thyme leaves. Make plenty because it's delicious cubed and fried until crispy the next day.

-Grainlady

Ditto what GL said. Boiled baby reds are out of this world. Next best is oven roasted with butter, olive oil & lots of garlic. And, if you're snitching just a few new potatoes from still growing plants, you can make boiled fresh green beans & new potatoes. Green beans, bacon for flavoring, new potatoes boiled together. Make enough to have leftovers to reheat the next day.

Two ideas for a simple French potato salad:

~ boil new potatoes in their skins, drain, slice while warm and pour over a homemade French vinaigrette made with Dijon mustard, olive oil, wine vinegar, minced fresh garlic clove, salt and pepper; serve at room temp with fresh chopped parsley and green onions

~ same boiled potatoes, still warm, slice or cube, pour over a good quality Caesar salad dressing, mix in chopped parsley and green onions.

The main thing is to let the potatoes marinate in the dressing while they are still warm. They soak up the dressing much better then. If you want a mayonnaise potato salad you can stir in some mayo and more dijon mustard after marinating the potatoes in the dressing.

Teresa

We grow potatoes every year and they are good cooked anyway. Boiled, fried, baked, mashed, but my go to is boiled, just like Grainlady. My Mother used to wipe the skins off the smaller ones and boil them until just tender, dry and then fry them until crispy. They were so good, crispy on the outside and soft on the inside.

A few years ago we grew potatoes for Frito Lay. They planted probably an acre in one of our fields for us, that is alot of potatoes and I mean alot. We have a summer program for underpriveleged children and they are always short on funds. My DH told them we would dig as many potatoes as they wanted as long as what they picked them and split with Home Delivered Meals. Those kids had so much fun picking and sorting through potatoes. They didn't know they grew underground. They picked up 200 or 300 pounds.

Since then we haven't grown potatoes for frito lay, but they still come and plant potatoes for us.

I'm not a huge fan of boiled potatoes but when fresh from the garden it gets my vote. I like them with some butter or olive oil (just a bit) and salt and pepper. I find when they are baked they are a little mushy. Potato salad would be nice too.

My favorite recipe for new potatoes, is to lightly coat a shallow baking pan with olive oil, thick slice the potatoes (if they're really small, just cut in half - slices about 1/2 inch thick work great). Lay the slices in a single layer on the pan. Season to taste with salt and pepper and if you like, fresh rosemary or parsley or herbs de Provence. Place in broiler (but with pan set low so the heat is high, but you're not right against the heat source). I use my tabletop convection/broiler with the rack set one level below "broil", but the gauge set to broil. It takes about 8-10 minutes on each side.

The potatoes puff up and brown beautifully. They're slightly crispy, but not fried. The flavor of the potato really comes through.

I usually use this method for baby Yukon Golds or Russian Banana Fingerlings.

My neighbor grows potatoes....and this year they will probably be the only thing that the deer and the coons didn't get to first.
The flavor is just so much better than stored potatoes. I like them best just oven roasted with a mix of butter and olive oil....no garlic or herbs to mask the fresh potato taste..add that in a month when they begin to taste like store potatoes.
I hope he doesn't forget me this year when he'd doling out produce!
Linda C

Thanks so much for your suggestions! I've never thought of potatoes having that much flavor. To me, a potato is a potato is a potato... just something to smother with butter, cheese, etc. and be filling. I'm excited to think that they might actually have a different, delicious flavor when home grown! I've actually read some people would rather have a home grown potato over a home grown tomato! Now that's saying something!

Thanks again and, if anyone else has more suggestions, please chime in!

I have nothing new to add,
I totally agree with those who said
(basically)
Keep it simple.
Just a very little butter and/or olive oil,
A bit of salt and pepper.
No strong herbs/dressings to mask or cover up
The wonderful fresh potato flavor!

But I do hope you will come back and let us know how you like them!

Rusty

It's not just the good flavor that makes new potatoes special. It's the firm, crisp texture and the thin skins which, good as they are, stored potatoes don't have. They are excellent just boiled in their skins.

Jim

Like Jim, I appreciate the texture of fresh potatoes as much as the flavor, and yes, they are worlds away from the store potatoes.

I like them roasted with olive oil and a little salt and pepper, or simply boiled, like Grainlady. And she's right, make extra, they're delicious fried crispy for breakfast the next day. They'd also delicious "crashed", ala Pioneer Woman:

Crash Hot Potatoes
Makes as many as you please
Several Smallish Potatoes, red or russet
Salt
Pepper
Olive Oil
2-3 Sprigs Rosemary
Preheat oven to 450ú F.
Scrub the potatoes clean. Boil them until tender all the way through. Place the cooked potatoes on a baking sheet drizzled with olive oil.

Make an X cut on the top of each potato for easier squishing. Use a potato masher and gently press on each potato until squished but not obliterated. You want them to stay together somewhat. If they fall apart, have no fear! Just scoop the bits into piles and proceed.
Once smashed, generously sprinkle salt over each potato. Follow with pepper, and douse everything with more olive oil. If desired, sprinkle each potato with freshly chopped rosemary.

Bake the potatoes at 450 F for 20-25 minutes, longer is better as long as they�re not burning. Serve hot!

They also make outstanding corned beef hash...

Annie

Lots of good suggestions. Just whatever you do, for your first tasting just boil or steam until just done and taste them with just butter and salt so you can check out the flavor, more or less nekkid. After that one of my favorites is to pan fry them. Smallish cubes from raw potatoes, fairly high heat, let them brown quite well. Don't move around too much at first to let the down sides brown, then after they start to get somewhat brown you can move them around more often so all sides get brown. Very crispy on the outside and soft inside. Don't forget to salt before they cool off so salt sticks.

Yes, potato salad and roasted are great, but so is steamed with some butter and salt. We picked enough peas for DH's favorite childhood comfort food yesterday...peas and new potatoes in cream sauce. He dug up some of the volunteer potatoes, so we had a mix of teenytiny reds, purple vikings, fingerlings and bintjes (like Yukons). Mmmmm...

Thanks, Annie. I've been trying to duplicate one of our restaurant's smashed baked potatoes and I can't get them to smash right. The X must be the key. Can't wait for those teenytiny taters to get big enough to smash.

good luck on those smashed potatoes, katiec!

I planted some fingerlings in my little backyard space, about a dozen. The potatoes were left from last year and were sprouting but still good after eing stored for a year, so I'm excited to see what I actually get. Of course, I can just take a drive to Newaygo, there's a guy there who grows a field of red potatoes and I can normally get a 50 pound bag for $8 when he starts harvesting. They aren't graded, so they are all sizes, which is good for me. Big ones get peeled and cut up or made into french fries, tiny ones become creamed potatoes, all other sizes it depends on what sounds good.

Annie

"A few years ago we grew potatoes for Frito Lay. They planted probably an acre in one of our fields for us, that is alot of potatoes and I mean alot. We have a summer program for underpriveleged children and they are always short on funds. My DH told them we would dig as many potatoes as they wanted as long as what they picked them and split with Home Delivered Meals. Those kids had so much fun picking and sorting through potatoes. They didn't know they grew underground. They picked up 200 or 300 pounds."

That was a very fine and generous thing to do!
So many benefits
For so many recipients!

Thank you for sharing that story.

Rusty

For me, to get the best potato flavor, it's baked. Just a light bit of salt, possibly a few grains of pepper and only a dash of butter to let the potato flavor come through.

I had posted on another forum a while back about how people don't seem to like potato flavor anymore and you would have thought I condoned putting puppies through a wood chipper! LOL Seems like people have to douse it with fat, fat and more fat, then powerful flavors to override the subtle potato flavor and then talk about how great they are! Putting cream cheese, sour cream, onion, garlic, etc in there, well some thing that's "the best potatoes!!!!", but to me why have the potato in there? (No wonder Americans are so fat!) Yes, occasionally it's fine for something different but I grew up with potatoes and still enjoy them and I like the stark simplicity of them and the flavor of the potato itself. Even good fries are a joy and the flavor comes through when properly prepared and don't need to be buried in ketchup like the Mcfry needs. But I also enjoy a meatloaf for the meat, not the inch of ketchup on it and we all know about that.

Roasted potatoes are another favorite and have much flavor but it's also modified with the roasted flavor. Boiled? Well, I'd prefer steamed if given a choice. I think boiling takes away a lot of flavor (same with sweet corn). And I much prefer white and gold to red potatoes. To me, reds are like eating candles.

I have a question, and I guess this thread is a good place to post it. I recently read that for boiled potatoes, as well as other vegetables that grow underground, it's best to start them in cold water, not boiling water. No explanation was given, so I'm wondering whether the reason is for better nutrition, texture, aesthetic appearance, or something else. Anybody know? Do you all do it that way? I never did.

Tonight, I tried putting the potatoes into a pot of cold water. We couldn't detect any difference in the finished product, except perhaps they looked a bit cleaner (less starch clinging to them?). They tasted the same. Advantage: I didn't have to worry about getting splashed with boiling water.

Sue

I'm sure you know that you don't need to "pull up" the plant. You can just reach in the soil and take what you need, or just fork up a shovel full. My potatoes never keep that well, so I just leave them in the ground until I want them. Of course, if you want new baby potatoes, you need to. lift them from the ground.

I loved the story about the kids that dug up the potatoes. It's important for all of us to understand where our food comes from.

Thanks Rusty and Lucy, it was fun seeing the kids in total amazement at all the potatoes you get from one plant,, and they all thought they came from the grocery store. LOL