Carrion Luggage

The Eyes Have It

Yes, this headline, from allrecipes, is clickbait, or perilously close to it.

     This Unexpected Trick Keeps Potatoes From Sprouting, According to an Expert  
We tested the popular hack to see if it really works.

I'm actually more annoyed at the continued use of "hack" in this context. But I'm not sure if it's better or worse than "trick."

Whether you like them fried, roasted, baked, or made into tots...

"Boil 'em, mash 'em, stick 'em in a stew. Lovely big golden chips with a nice piece of fried fish"

...you probably have at least one favorite potato dish.

Sure: Latkes.

Plus, potatoes are inexpensive—you can often get a large 5-pound bag for just a few dollars.

How much for the small 5-pound bag?

But if you’re a household of one or two, it can be a challenge to eat all those potatoes before they go bad, no matter how much you like them.

Whenever I see something about food "going bad," I imagine it standing on a street corner in a leather jacket and tattoos and chains, smoking a cigarette.

That’s why videos of people stashing apples in their bags of potatoes to prevent sprouting have popped up all over social media. But does this trick work? We looked to the science, talked to an expert, and tried it ourselves to find out for you.

No, I didn't just save this article so I could make potato jokes. That's just a bonus. I'm using this as an example of How To Do Science. Still. Remember the French phrase that translates to "potato:" pomme de terre, which, literally, translates to something like "earth apple" or "ground apple" (as in "the ground," not the past tense of "grind.") So I find the apple trick amusing, whether it works or not.

But in addition to storing them in that cool, dark, and ventilated space, can putting an apple in your potato sack really stop, or at least slow, potato spoilage? Well, it’s a little complicated.

So, how to do science. This is an easy and cheap experiment, though if you have an ethical issue with deliberately wasting food, maybe skip it. Find a bunch of potatoes from the same harvest, get an apple, split the potatoes into two groups, put each group in a sack (one with the apple) and leave them in the same room under the same conditions, but not so close to each other that apple fumes transfer.

Then simply check to see which batch, if either, grows eyes first.

Of course, just one experiment won't cut it. It needs to be repeatable and verifiable. Also, best if you have a third batch of potatoes from the same source set out on the counter or something as a control group.

There’s some scientific evidence to support this hack. Ethylene gas is a natural plant hormone produced by fruits like apples, bananas, and tomatoes. It plays a crucial role in the ripening process of fruits and the aging of vegetables. The theory behind the apple-potato trick is that apples release ethylene gas, and ethylene gas has been shown to inhibit potatoes from sprouting in at least one lab experiment.

This is the "hypothesis" stage of science. Not "theory." It's the starting point. But one must also take into account the possibility that there are other factors in the pomme / pomme de terre synergy, not just ethylene gas. For that, you'd probably need a real lab setup.

As a practical matter though, what you're really just looking for is extended shelf life on your spuds, so while the mechanism is interesting, just doing the experiment is good enough for the kitchen.

Or, you know, trust the other scientists who have already done the experiment.

The study showed that ethylene treatment delayed the sprouting of potatoes, at least under these tightly managed conditions.

It's the "tightly managed conditions" that are often the stumbling point between experiment and practicality.

To put this apple-potato trick to the test, I conducted a simple experiment in my home kitchen. I divided a bag of potatoes into two groups: one stored with an apple and the other without. I kept both bags in a relatively cool, dark pantry and checked on them every day for more than a week.

See, what'd I tell you?

Surprisingly, after seven days, I found that the bag of potatoes with the apple actually sprouted first, while the bag without the apple sprouted about 24 hours later, after eight days. It’s a puzzling result considering the research.

A puzzling result, maybe, but a good result. Why good? Because it exposes a possible error in your hypothesis, or your method, and that's the fun part.

My pantry isn’t a lab, and my climate control was anything but precise. Plus, different potato varieties may have varying susceptibility to sprouting.

Okay, yeah, but like I said: get your potatoes from the same batch. If one batch was dug up 3 days ago and the other, 5, then the experiment has a fatal flaw from the get-go.

There is no harm in trying this trick at home, says Jayanty. Whether you go with an apple or a banana, it won’t hurt the potatoes, and it just might delay sprouting.

"No harm" unless you'd rather have an apple or a banana than a potato to eat.

The article ends with actual scientifically-backed tips for extending tater life, so there's some practicality there, apart from the kitchen science stuff.