Cook the whole bag, then freeze it

Cook it, and put what you cooked in the freezer. Some people say the way to get through a bulk bag is to cook a large batch — mashed or baked are the two they name — and freeze it, so the week becomes reheating instead of peeling. People name mashed and baked as the two that freeze well. Some people, short of time, use the microwave: wrap the potato in a damp paper towel or part-cook it first, and it is done far faster than an oven — one person warns microwave times vary and the wrong minutes leaves you with a burnt one. Some people use the oven at high heat and roast onions alongside for a cheap second dish. On peeling, people argue whether the tricks — boiling first so the skin slips off — beat a plain peeler; people’s decider is how many potatoes you are doing and what tools you have. Many people say the point of a potato is that it takes every method — boiled, mashed, baked, fried, stewed — and one person says a pound a day for more than ten years never got dull. Against that, one person says potatoes are harder to cook well than they look: boiled and mashed can come out bland and frying burns them. One person saves the water from boiled potatoes for bread dough, another fries the peels with spices instead of binning them, and one says cooking, cooling and reheating potatoes turns some of the starch into a form the body digests more slowly — a claim people left as one person’s. How long frozen potatoes keep, and how to keep cooked ones for several days in the fridge, are not covered here — those are gaps this page leaves too.

Cool, dark, dry, and not next to the fruit — with one honest split about the fridge. One person gives the detail, and some people warn: potatoes want a cool, dark place — a pantry or a basement, around ten degrees Celsius — and a hot room is too warm for them. Sunlight turns them green and then they rot, one person warns, and another says keep them apart from bananas, onions, apples and avocados, which hurry them along. Some people raise the honest drawback against instant noodles: a bag of potatoes can sprout and mould within a week or so, and one person says how fast they turn is the real drawback if you have no cool, dry, dark corner. On the fridge, some people warn it is too cold for long-term storage. That is where the world has moved, and the two sides are named: this page’s own line, from outside the discussion: US food-safety guidance still says do not refrigerate raw potatoes, because the cold turns some of the starch to sugar and fried potatoes then form more acrylamide; UK food-safety guidance changed in 2023 after its own research and now says the fridge is fine. So if a warm flat is your only option, the UK guidance is the one that permits the fridge, and the US guidance is the one that would rather you did not fry what came out of it. How to stop sprouting and mould, how long a bag lasts, and what to do when no cool space exists are not covered here; the external line this page adds is that food-safety guidance says to cut away any green or sprouting parts and to throw out a potato that is very green or bitter.

Beans or lentils, an egg, a tin of tomatoes, a little fat — and the mistakes people caught about butter and about the skin. Some people say a potato with beans or lentils is a fuller, cheaper meal than a potato alone, and others add eggs, rice, tinned tomatoes, spices and some fat, alternating them across the week so the plate changes. Some people bake at high heat and put butter and sour cream on top for staying power; some people warn that the fancy mashed recipe that went round used so much butter it stopped being cheap, and one person is blunt that butter and potatoes do not make a complete diet. One person buys dry beans because they cost a fraction of tinned, soaks them overnight and boils them — and that person is the one who corrected themselves on the slow cooker, so read the safety line above. Other one-person additions: a bag of frozen mixed vegetables keeps longer than fresh and mixes into many dishes; stock cubes are cheaper than cartons of stock; a single roast chicken becomes several meals and a soup. Some people name lentils, chickpeas, beans and rice as the other cheap staples that reheat well, and some people warn that plain rice tastes of nothing unless you season it — one person adds rinsing it and measuring the water, and another adds that the fragrant long-grain kind costs more. On the skin: some people say leave it on — for convenience, flavour and what they believe is the nutrition — and one person with the numbers answers that the skin’s vitamins and minerals are about the same per gram as the flesh, with a little more fibre; so keep it on because it is easier, not because it is where the goodness hides. Mistakes people caught, for anyone watching blood sugar or kidney stones: sweet potatoes, despite the name, raise blood sugar more slowly than white ones in one person’s tables, and it is sweet potatoes, not white ones, that carry a lot of oxalic acid.

People argue this again and again and never settle it, so here are the sides and their deciders. Some people argue each side: potatoes win on cost, filling power and nutrition, against rice and beans winning on keeping longer, on nutrition and on needing no special storage. Some people take the bulk-cooking side, and some the time-poor side, who say that someone with no time will reach for whatever is quick, noodles included, even if it is worse for them; one person speaks up for potatoes and some people for lentils and rice; and one person speaks up for lentils on protein, against some people for potatoes. People’s deciders are the same each time: do you have somewhere cool and dark to keep a bag; do you have the time and a hob; and what will you actually eat without grumbling. Some people say potatoes come out cheaper per calorie than instant noodles, and in the same breath that local prices swing enough to reverse it — one person’s shop had potatoes dearer. Some people defend the noodles: for time-poor working people the quick meal has a place, valued for speed rather than taste, and one person says some of the people eating instant noodles do it because they like them, not because they are broke. Two warnings cut the other way, one person each: bulk buying needs money up front that you may not have this week, and storing bulk dry goods needs containers. One argument is worth carrying whole: one person says if you are living on potatoes you need real help, not a vegetable tip, and another says it is still a useful tip — this page holds both, and if the first one is you, the support pages on this site are there for the help part.

For a while, some of the people did — and the same people say where it ends. Some people got through months on potatoes alone, and one lived largely on potatoes, rice and beans for nearly a decade after a spell of homelessness. Some people say a white potato carries all nine essential amino acids and can keep a person going alongside a multivitamin; people argue whether that is survival or a diet, and people’s decider is whether the goal is calories to get through the month or meeting what the guidance says a body needs. Then the limit, which people in some discussions warn of: potatoes have no vitamin B12, and living on them alone for long enough ends in deficiency and real illness — people name yeast extract, seaweed, eggs, dairy or a supplement as the way B12 gets in, and standard nutrition guidance in the UK and the US says the same about plant foods. One person warns the protein is a little short for keeping muscle over the long run; one says eating only potatoes brings a nausea and an aversion that makes the next one hard to face; one says a lot of butter and salt is not a healthy way to make them bearable, though one person with low blood pressure found the salt helped. One person has potatoes and good butter covering every need, against another person’s arithmetic of how much butter that would take — this page sides with the arithmetic. The long-term health of a potato-heavy diet beyond the vitamin line is a question people raised and left open. If your money has you here, this page is for stretching the bag; the support pages on this site are for the rest.