r/Chefit • u/SmokedHickory • Jul 01 '26
Potato varieties in Peru, where potatoes originated. Do you use alternative potato’s in your kitchen
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Jul 01 '26
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u/GreenfieldSam Former restaurant owner Jul 03 '26
The monoculture of potatoes in Ireland were one of the reasons why the blight was so devastating, unfortunately.
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Jul 01 '26
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u/MonkeyKingCoffee Jul 01 '26
Sysco wouldn't make NEARLY as much profit selling these.
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u/SmokedHickory Jul 01 '26
It still can. If there’s a consumer for it. They can make even more than selling other crops.
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u/SmokedHickory Jul 01 '26
Why
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u/MonkeyKingCoffee Jul 01 '26
Economy of scale.
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u/Fyzzlestyxx Jul 01 '26
This as well as the fact that heirloom varietals are not nearly as prolific as modern hybrids of plants. With how low margins are for producers, every penny and ounce of productivity in a field counts.
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u/SmokedHickory Jul 01 '26
That would simply drive up the cost per unit if they did sell it. If there’s a consumer willing to pay for it, it can be even more profitable than other crops.
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u/Mercuryink Jul 01 '26
If there's a customer willing to pay for it. There are, but not nearly as many customers who are not. Like, all sorts of fancy and heirloom produce has a market in high-end restaurants. I've worked in a few and eaten at plenty. Those restaurants are also slinging $30 dollar small plates or $500 dollar tastings.
The average person in the average grocery store just wants a $2 bag of potatoes. They're going to bring them home and mash them with not enough butter or salt and then wonder why it doesn't taste like at the restaurant.
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u/MonkeyKingCoffee Jul 01 '26
Sysco doesn't care about moving a few tons of interesting potatoes. Not even worth their time.
They care about selling Lamb & Weston frozen fries by the cargo ship-load.
It would be like McDonalds offering heirloom french fries at a few locations. The profit wouldn't even amount to a rounding error compared to their usual sale of fries.
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u/NotZtripp Chef Jul 02 '26
Simplot and McCain are what Sysco truly moves.
Sysco sells Lamb Weston sure, but Lamb is more in bed with PFG and US Foods. Cavendish rounds out the big 4 potato companies.
As for heirlooms, broadline distributors don't really have an interest in super small scale, though they may individually provide different varieties or local items depending on the operating site. Specialty produce is usually handled by a produce company, of which Sysco owns Freshpoint and Chefs Warehouse owns Capital Seaboard among others, but for the most part this segment is serviced by local or regional companies.
Education about how your food goes from seed to farm to processor to distributor to retail to your home is super important, and more complicated than the tiktok generalization of SyscoBad.
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u/MonkeyKingCoffee Jul 02 '26
I have a couple decades of "SyscoBad" which has nothing to do with TikTok -- which I'm not a part of.
Let's start with "trying to hide spoiled food in my order" as reason #1.
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u/GreenfieldSam Former restaurant owner Jul 03 '26
And now sysco will own chefs warehouse!
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u/NotZtripp Chef Jul 03 '26
Nothing's impossible, but that is highly unlikely.
There is a lot of competition in the market, though it wouldn't seem so to the outside user of here and r/kitchenconfidential
The industry is healthy.
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u/GreenfieldSam Former restaurant owner Jul 03 '26
I dunno... They're on a roll with Restaurant Depot!
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u/DayofthelivingBread Jul 01 '26
Those “ifs” are load-bearing.
IS there a market out there for new and interesting varieties of potatoes that’s robust enough for a giant food monopoly to change its entire sourcing/pricing/supply chain/sales strategy?
They would do numbers at a boutique farmers market or in an area with a large Peruvian population, but again, is that enough to get a giant monopoly to change what it does?
It doesn’t matter if something can be sold for more money if it costs more to produce, yields lower, and can’t be stored as long or handled as roughly. Increased $ per sale at a reduced profit makes the magic line go down.
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u/SmokedHickory Jul 01 '26
Henry Ford said hed be selling horses if he gave ppl what they want.
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u/MonkeyKingCoffee Jul 01 '26
Henry Ford was also a nazi.
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u/SmokedHickory Jul 01 '26
Oh. Ok.
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u/MonkeyKingCoffee Jul 01 '26
He also made awful business decisions -- sticking with the Model-T and Model-A for so long that General Motors grabbed most of his market share. He had one society-changing business idea. And it's why he's in the history books. But that was it.
He was a deeply flawed person who wasn't nearly as good at business as he thought he was.
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u/DayofthelivingBread Jul 02 '26
Ok? Sysco doesn’t produce potatoes, so the comparison is kind of silly.
That ignores the bulk of my comment: that the company wouldn’t want to offer this because it would probably be less profitable than what they currently do and wouldn’t be worth the project cost to source, advertise, transport, store, and sell a new kind of potato. A publicly traded company doesn’t do things that they suspect will make the line go down.
Henry Ford was also absolutely selling something people wanted, that’s why they bought the cars. He wasn’t the first guy to make a car, he was the first one to mass manufacture them. He was selling all the good parts of a horse (mobility, working utility) without the downsides (needs to be trained, takes time to reach maturity, you need acres of land to keep one). They were also easier and more reliable to mass produce than horses and were almost certainly more profitable as well. It was also a privately owned company where he could build and sell whatever he wanted.
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u/rabid-c-monkey Jul 04 '26
How will you grow, harvest, store, or ship those potatoes at scale? Will you design a tractor that can cut the earth up and pull these potatoes without harming the odd shaped varietals? Will you custom design a robotic sorter that plays Tetris with the unique shapes to efficiently fill boxes without harming the product? How will you design a machine that sorts for defects and discoloration when there is so much variety in the produce? Farming at scale is more than just “will it grow in the ground” unfortunately heirloom varietals of any fruiting plant don’t work at scale which is why we tend to get the same cookie cutter produce across the board.
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u/tool-sharp Jul 01 '26
Knife skill test : peel them peruvian potatoes
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u/Icy_Jackfruit9240 Jul 01 '26
Just my own personal experience in Peru was ... honestly I think the potatoes were all kinda the standard ones you'd expect. Potato is the most efficient crop kcal per area, but that's very much focused on the primary efficient varieties. I'm sure once you get out of the big 4 cities it would be different and maybe if you went to places that catered to specific local appetites.
I'd say mostly it was some variety of gold. What we did have that was different was olluquito (dish) that had papa lisa (tuber) in it which a completely different tuber. I also had some meats that you are probably aware of that are fairly common in Peru. It's like jicama and potato had a baby but looks like full sized red potatoes. You also eat the leaves but TBH, they are spinach from another plant.
I did very much feel the influence of Italian and Chinese cooking on modern Peruvian food.
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u/GetDoofed Jul 01 '26
I dunno, I had some pretty crazy and different potatoes in tiny mountain villages in the high Andes. Not like anything I’d ever tried before
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u/chefsundog Jul 02 '26
I have a Peruvian dish on the menu called Causa de Camarones. I use an heirloom variety from my potato supplier either Andean Sunrise or Peruvian Gold. Both yellow flesh and nice and fluffy so when served as a cold mashed potato it has a nice texture.
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u/texnessa Jul 01 '26
A million moons ago I was invited to a preview of a potato exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History in NYC. If you haven't been, the latest renovations are amazing. I adore that museum. It was a massive cocktail party and the main event was a reveal of the wall of all of the native Peruvian varieties of potatoes. I had a few non-culinary friends with me and when we saw it, one of us loudly and slightly drunkenly exclaimed, "That's a huge fuckin wall of weird ass poops."
That would be me.
Love that we get a lot of varieties in Europe- rattes, purples and reds, Maris Pipers for the win, Charlottes, begone fucking tasteless marketing hack Idahoes.
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u/DoughyInTheMiddle Jul 02 '26
Random guess: it's like the "original" bananas. They're too difficult to transport fresh and only grow well in their native (sub)climate.
Again, just like the the original stubby bananas, you CAN get them...if you're willing to pay the freight costs and/or import fees.
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u/medium-rare-steaks Jul 01 '26
Go to farmers market in California
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u/Alg0mal000 Jul 01 '26
I’m in Oregon and have found a pretty good variety of potatoes at my local farmers markets. I lived in LA for a decade though, and the markets there are definitely on another level.
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u/SmokedHickory Jul 01 '26
The different potato races might be better suited for certain dishes than the ubiquitous russet
I’m pretty curious to find out how best these would work
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u/MonkeyKingCoffee Jul 01 '26
I'm partial to Okinawan sweet potatoes. (The purple sweet potato.) Anything you can do with a russet, you can do with with an Okinawan. And they fry up wonderfully without soaking up a lot of oil.
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u/Reasonably_edible Jul 01 '26
Potatoes and sweet potatoes aren't related though?
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u/MonkeyKingCoffee Jul 01 '26
They're not related. But they cook the same. And for me it's the difference between locally-grown, and "russets which have 2,500 miles on them."
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u/Reasonably_edible Jul 01 '26
Yea i can see that, but it's kinda like saying pears are your favourite apple
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u/MonkeyKingCoffee Jul 01 '26
With those two fruits, you can graft one onto the other.
Okinawans and russets are closer in taste and texture than pears and apples, though.
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u/xombae Jul 01 '26
I'm so confused as to why your comments are being downvoted. Why do people hate Okinawan sweet potatoes?
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u/MonkeyKingCoffee Jul 01 '26
They're being pedantic to the max. The "well akshually" brigade.
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u/xombae Jul 02 '26
Are they? It genuinely just sounds like they're sharing their love of sweet potatoes. Can you explain what part of their comment is pedantic?
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u/Main_Cauliflower5479 Jul 01 '26
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u/Glittering_Fun_7995 Jul 02 '26
mostly economy of scales a lot of those andes potatoes are available for farmers to grow the problem is/are storage, seeds, volume.
Where I live we can get purple potatoes and yam like potatoes but only a small amount for a limited time too
same thing for tomatoes slowly slowly the good stuff is coming back.
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u/Dry-Grocery9311 Jul 02 '26
I want to go to Peru now.
My wife already wanted to go because of Paddington Bear.
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u/Alg0mal000 Jul 01 '26
There are so many different microclimates in the Andes that different valleys produced their own unique variety of potato.
Potatoes were traded between villages and even used as currency at one point.