Althouse: "It's a potato. Unless you are dying of malnourishment with zombies at your door and no options for other food don't eat it."

January 1, 2012

"It's a potato. Unless you are dying of malnourishment with zombies at your door and no options for other food don't eat it."

The hive mind hovers around a single baked potato, "stupidly left.... in a cold oven for a few days."

12 comments:

Toad Trend said...: Put it in the microwave on 6 or 7 for about 2 minutes+, douse with fresh butter and sour cream, and enjoy. Maybe a little dry, but eminently edible!!!; 1/1/12, 7:51 AM
joewxman said...: even better. Slice said baked potato any way you like. preheat oven to 500 degrees. drizzle with ev olive oil and bread crumbs...and flash fry! I usually do this with several leftover potatoes. Sometimes i bake or boil them first and then flash fry them. They come out like crispy fries without the frying pan.; 1/1/12, 8:10 AM
PaulV said...: Hash brown, bacon, sausage and eggs work of New Years Day breakfast; 1/1/12, 8:47 AM
Anonymous said...: compost; 1/1/12, 8:51 AM
KCFleming said...: Darwin says, Yes, by all means, waste not.; 1/1/12, 9:38 AM
edutcher said...: You should eat.; 1/1/12, 10:08 AM
Crimso said...: Let it sit. Then: vodka!; 1/1/12, 10:32 AM
MDIJim said...: Potatoes (remember how the media crucified Dan Quayle?) were practically the only food eaten by millions of people in countries with cool summers. What killed millions of Irish people in the 1840s was the failure of the potato crop that they relied on for food, coupled with a mercantilist British policy of letting the Irish starve whilst exporting other grain crops. If potato crops had not failed in the XIX century, this country would not have benefited from millions of fine illegal Irish, German, and Polish immigrants.

fry some bacon, slice the potato, and fry the slices in the bacon grease. That, with a couple of eggs fried in the same grease, makes a very tasty, if not heart-healthy, meal.Yum!; 1/1/12, 11:05 AM
Quaestor said...: Don't Tread 2012 wrote:
Put it in the microwave on 6 or 7 for about 2 minutes+...

joewxman wrote:
I usually do this with several leftover potatoes...

I've re-cooked and breakfasted on a spud left overnight in the microwave, but such orphans usually go to the Deerhound, who loves potatoes generally. I don't believe there's much danger in a potato allowed to cool for 12 hours; a reasonably clean oven is not an friendly place for bacteria and fungal spores to hang out so if the door is left closed the odds against contamination are favorable. Also the most likely airborne contaminates are yeasts and fungi. These aren't necessarily bad, fermentation might even improve the taste! (Some ethic recipes call for mixing cooked potatoes with yaw yogurt which are then left to ferment.) Like a fine old veined cheese a bit of mold might make a bland old spud into something admirable... maybe, on a good day, with a following wind... I'd let somebody else try it first.

All this being said there is a caveat, a big one I think: The original quandary mentioned a potato left forgotten for a few days, not one abandoned at dinnertime and eaten the following morning. A rotten potato is a disgusting thing. Toss it.; 1/1/12, 11:09 AM
Anonymous said...: While not an autoclave, I would think an oven raised to 300 to 500 degrees to bake a potato in 30 - 60 minutes and then left closed for two to three days is a reasonably sterile environment itself.

The potato itself will be hot enough to steam and pressurized inside (depending on how many holes are punctured in the skin.)

I'm just an old country engineer and not some fancy meta-filter analyst, but I'm guessing that potato is plenty sterile.; 1/1/12, 11:26 AM
dbp said...: I think 27183 is correct. The oven and the potato are sterile and will not become contaminated as long as the oven remains closed.

My only concern is with the flavor; the metafilter post indicated that the cook had rubbed the outside with oil. Cooked oil becomes rancid tasting fairly quickly. I doubt it would cause illness, but it could taste fairly bad after a few days.; 1/1/12, 11:35 AM
Trashhauler said...: I recall fifty years ago when my Grandmother stored potatoes all winter in giant sand-filled crocks in her root cellar. A few rotted, but most were good to eat in Spring. She did the same with apples. They got a little dry but were still edible.

Zap it, slice it, fry it, mash it up, go ahead, it won't kill you.

Probably. ::grin::; 1/1/12, 12:09 PM