Restaurateurs: Preserve Flavour and Your Bottom Line With These Spud Storage Tips

4 May 2016
 Categories: , Blog

Share

As a restaurant owner, you always have to think about taste and your bottom line, and the way you store your potatoes can affect both of these issues. Want to ensure you're storing your spuds correctly? Take a look at these tips:

1. Store some of your potatoes in a cool, dark place.

When you buy commercial bulk potatoes, you need a cool, dark space to store them. Ideally, you want a pantry where the average temperature is between 7 and 10 degrees Celsius. Keep a thermometer in your pantry so you can monitor the temps and increase cooling or boost heat as needed. Also, minimise the light in this area, as light can cause the potatoes to sprout.

This is how you should store the spuds you plan to use to bake or mash.

2. Keep some potatoes in the fridge.

You should keep the potatoes you plan to fry or roast in the fridge. When you store potatoes at temps lower than 4.5 degrees, the starches in them begin to convert to sugar.

When you roast or fry these potatoes, the sugar on their edges crystallizes, and this creates a delicious brown crust around the potatoes during cooking.

3. Do not freeze leftover potato dishes.

If you have leftover potatoes at the end of the night, you may be able to store them in the fridge and reuse them the next day. However, you should not freeze these dishes and reuse them at a later date. While it's safe to do that, it isn't flavorful or attractive.

When you freeze potatoes, the water separates from the potato. When you reheat the dish, the water and the potato struggle to recombine, and the dish ends up being watery. If you have leftover spuds, turn them into part of the staff meal for the night, or make them part of a special so you can sell them quickly.

4. Store cut potatoes in water.

If your chefs cut a bunch of potatoes that they end up not using, you don't have to waste those raw potatoes. You can save them if you store them in water. Make sure they are fully submerged, and place them in the fridge or the pantry overnight. The water will prevent the cut potatoes from oxidising and turning brown.

5. Rotate your stock regularly.

When you are managing a large inventory of bulk potatoes, you need to be sure to rotate them. When a new delivery comes in, put it in the back of your old potatoes, and make sure you use the oldest potatoes first. Also, if you store your potatoes in a large bin, look through it occasionally and pull out rotten potatoes so that the rot does not spread to the rest of your stock.