I am going to cut some potatoes tonight for a dish I am going to make tomorrow. Will keeping the cut pieces in water immediately after cutting preserve them? There are suggestions at other websites that say adding some lime juice to the water will help. Has anyone had experience preserving potatoes?
Preserve cut potatoes
food-preservationpotatoes
Related Solutions
Clean your potatoes. Peel if desired.
Slice in half, lengthways.
Place flat sides down on your cutting board. Cut again in half, lengthways. This would be for very large wedges. For slightly smaller, cut in thirds, lengthways, on a 60 degree angle, from the outside of the potato to the centre line where it hits the cutting board.
For even smaller, slice in half again after the second half cut.
You could try cooking the potatoes before freezing them. In particular twice-baked potatoes and mashed potatoes take well to freezing.
How to Preserve Potatoes Without a Root Cellar on the Westphoria blog that discusses how to build a container so emulate a root cellar.
You could also experiment with lacto-fermentation, using either raw or cooked potatoes. Fermenting foods not only preserves them, but also generally improves their nutrition by making micronutrients more bioavailable.
- Here is an interesting technical article about potato fermentation
- Here are some comments from PaleoHacks on fermenting potatoes.
- In The Art of Fermentation (p. 230) Sandor Katz briefly discusses potato fermentation. He describes fermenting cooked potatoes with other fermenting vegetables (though there's no reason you couldn't ferment them without the other vegetables).
- He also references Jenny McGruther (of Nourished Kitchen), she has a recipe for fermented potato chips that demonstrates a basic fermentation technique. The technique is basically to slice the potatoes thin, then mix with water and a starter culture such as whey or a starter culture packet.
- In The Mind of a Chef, season 1, episode 6 (or maybe 5), chef Rene Redzepi (of Noma) briefly discusses the process of aging potatoes to intensify their flavors, it might be interesting to you.
Best Answer
It's pretty normal in many cultures to prepare vegetables for the evening meal in the morning, or even the day before. This has a long recorded history, at least to Roman times
Typically, vegetables that brown badly in that 24 hour period are either stored under water, or coated with a suitable dilute acidic solution (orange, lemon, or lime juice)
Cut potatoes stored underwater do not seem to suffer any detrimental effect over a 12 to 24 hour period. There will most likely be some starch and other nutrient loss to the water, but not to a level that anyone notices