Storing potatoes & onions

Penelope_Penguin

sarahsarah wrote: »

Hello,I was wondering what the benefits were of buying a huuge sack of potatoes?

When our HG potatoes are done, we buy sacks from the farm shop. As others have said, you want unwashed ones, in paper (ir hessian) sacks.

We have an existing thread on this topic, so I'll mergte this later.

valk_scot

If they do come in plastic or you need additional storage if you for instance sort them by size (saves time later when in a hurry!) or quality you can use old pillow cases to keep them in. Dark ones are better but not totally light proof. A large cardboard box is ideal to keep cloth or paper bags of spuds in...punch a few holes in the sides to assist with air flow.

jcr16

i usually get our sack of spuds from veg shop, it in village about 3 miles away so i drive as i don't fancing carrying a sack of spuds home,lol. they are £5.50 for 25kg and that lasts us a family of 5 a month. they are dirty spud and in a big brown sack, never had a prob with them going off.

i do have a fruit and veg shop which is a 10 min walk away and they will deliver a sack of spuds for 50p, so either way driving or paying 50p delivery it is good.

flea72

i buy a sack of washed spuds for £6 (cant stand touching dirty spuds, it freaks me out lol)

i go through the sack and chuck out any bad ones (usually only 1 or 2 small ones) and then sort them out by size - so i have one bag of small spuds that are suitable for roasting (or bitesize jackpots), mid sized i keep for peeling, and the large ones are bakers

i keep them in my shed, as its dark and cold in there. a sack can last me up to 2m depending on how often we have spuds for tea, but ive never had to throw any away, because they have gone bad - although once it starts to warm up, they do chit more easily, but by then ive usually gone over to new/salad spuds, so dont bother buying by the sack in the summer

F

livermum

I pay about £4 for mine, I do suggest though that when you get them you go through them and remove any bad ones as they will make the others go off quicker. I have a storage cupboard which is dark and cold and I store them there. They last me ages and work out so much cheaper than the ones in the supermarkets.

kazwookie

I buy from the road side on my way to family in Norfolk, the guy or various memebers of his family have been selling in this spot for years, brown paper sack unwashed spuds £3.50, I would guess the weight to be about 10 - 15kgs or so, always buy 2 sacks, he puts them in the boot for me, I buy other veg as well at the same time, we yak about the weather etc and mardle about the day and off I go.

Lovely sized spuds, not had a problem with them going off, keep them off the floor in the garage, get how ever many I need every couple of days or so.

tori.k

Its £5.60 for 25kg (maris piper) down here, if you do go for it you do need to do as others had said and have a sort thru, it hasn't been a great year for spuds and any that have gone in wet will blight the others.
money wise for me it works out 25p cheaper to the LBS then asda

Lily-Lu

I don't think £9.99 for a sack is expensive. Buying direct from a farm will always be cheaper, because not only do you cut out the middle-man (greengrocer), you're also cutting out the transport costs and sometimes the printing on sack.
I'm in Manchester and my last sack were Maris Piper from Lincolnshire and I paid £9.50 for a 25 kilogramme sack.
Potatoes are so versatile and if you had nothing else in the house but spuds, you'd not go hungry. Rather than expensive, I'd say they were a bargain, even if they do cost a tenner a sack:)

We have no outside storage, so I keep ours in the under stairs cupboard; it's dark and dry in there and there's a vent in the bottom of the door. We're 3 adults and a sack lasts us a good 7-8 weeks and I've found that it's only when I get down to the last handful of spuds, they've started to sprout, or gone a little soft:)

Billie-jo

I buy our potatoes from a local greengrocer and they cost £6.99 for a 25 kg bag so I do think that the price you would pay is expensive.
Brought our last bag two weeks before christmas and are only half way through them now but they are fine. They are the dirty ones and I do find that they keep longer than the clean ones. However I would say that in the summer (please let us have one this year) then I wouldnt buy a big bag as they do seeem to go off quicker. I dont buy the big sacks between end May - Sept as a rule.

Can you not buy a bag with someone else and split them 50/50 One of our neighbours lives on his own and he buys half a bag from the local butchers.
Failing that if you have lots of freezer room, do lots of mash, roast potatoes and wedges etc so as you still get the benefit of the cost but dont have to worry so much about them going off.

soozywooz

We buy from a local greengrocer and they will do a half sack - £3 for 12.5 kg and that lasts us as our main dinner starch (family of 5) for 2 weeks. We found that a whole sack is too much and they have started to sprout and go soft by the time we get to the end of a 25 kg sack, so it's 12.5kg half sacks for us.