Young potatoes, depending on variety, appear from late spring and can delight in the second half of the summer. Even nutritionists who avoid heavy potatoes in the diets agree that young vegetables will only benefit and does not affect the figure.
To distinguish young potatoes is quite simple: it has soft delicate translucent skin. If you push it with your finger, it easily detaches. You must be carefull greenish potatoes: they contain poisonous solanine, unfit for human consumption.
How to cook
Early potatoes contain vitamin C, b vitamins and potassium, phosphorus, and iron. Potassium is important for the heart, reduces swelling, and removes excess fluid from the body.
Young potatoes help to improve the gastrointestinal tract, stimulates the brain, normalizes metabolism, and improve mood.
Since most nutrients are concentrated just under the skin of new potatoes, scraping it, we significantly reduce the use of this product. Cook and bake early potatoes better with the skin.
Fried potatoes are very high in calories and hard to digest. The calorie content of young potatoes 30 percent lower than in the old – 100 grams of young potato is only 90 calories. Potato contains no fat and contains a minimum of simple sugars, which are allowed to include it in the diet.
So the answer to the question of whether early potatoes are useful – definitely, Yes.
Nitrates in young potatoes
Are there are more nitrates in early potatoes? But potato is a vegetable, which is less likely to absorb nitrates, and the content of all plant foods is inevitable.
The number of nitrates in potatoes can be reduced, scraping the skin, but carefully so as to preserve the nutrients that are contained under it. The ideal is to thoroughly wash the potatoes under running water.
Make sure to store potatoes in the refrigerator at a low temperature below the risk of turning nitrates to more toxic nitrites. Soak before cooking the potatoes for one hour in water to reduce the content of nitrates by 20 percent.
Ready potatoes try to eat as quickly as possible. As for the sudden drop in temperature (refrigerator-heating), the remaining nitrates will quickly turn into nitrites.
How to cook new potatoes
The best way to cook young potatoes – boil it. The potatoes should be loaded into boiling water, so the maximum will continue vitamin C And potatoes great for potato pancakes and casseroles.
More about potato health benefits and harms read in our big article.