Can You Eat Sprouted Potatoes?

Everyone has found sprouts on a potato at some point. Potatoes and onions both do it when they sit too long, and since they are the two things most people buy in quantity, it happens regularly.

So can you still use them? Here is the short answer and then the reasoning.

When it is fine

If the sprouts are small and the potato is still firm and heavy, cut the sprouts out completely — dig into the flesh around each eye — and use the rest.

When to throw it away

If the potato has sprouted and gone soft, wrinkled or shrunken, throw it out. That texture means the potato has spent its own starch feeding the sprouts and the structure is gone. It will not cook properly and it will not taste right.

If the potato has turned green, that is a separate and more serious issue. Green means the potato has been exposed to light, and light triggers the production of solanine — a natural toxin the plant makes to defend itself.

A small green patch can be cut away generously, along with a good margin around it. But a potato that is green across the surface, or green and sprouting heavily, should go in the bin. Solanine is not destroyed by cooking, and in quantity it causes nausea, headache and stomach upset.

Green skin is also bitter, which is a useful signal. If a cooked potato tastes bitter, stop eating it.

How to stop potatoes sprouting

Cool and dark. Both light and warmth trigger sprouting, and a cupboard near the oven is the worst place in the kitchen. Somewhere cool with no light at all is what you want.

Not the refrigerator, though. Below about 45°F the starch in a potato starts converting to sugar, which makes it taste oddly sweet and causes it to darken when fried.

Keep them dry. Moisture accelerates sprouting and encourages rot. Never wash potatoes before storing — wash them when you are about to use them.

Let them breathe. A sealed container or a knotted plastic bag traps humidity. Use a paper bag, a basket, or a bag with holes in it.

Keep them away from onions. Onions release gases that hasten sprouting in potatoes. Stored side by side, both go over faster than either would alone — which is unfortunate, because most kitchens keep them in the same place.