What to do with sprouted potatoes?

I wasn't sure what category should I post this in, so sorry if it isn't the correct one.


Before winter, I had bought a lot of potatoes and kept them in the basement. I thought we would use most of them by spring and hoped they wouldn't go bad or sprout even when it gets a bit warmer. Unfortunately, that is not the case and now I have over 100kg of potatoes that have already sprouted. Now I am not sure what to do with them. I did plant some of them, but I don't have room to plant them all.

From what I've read, they are safe to eat as long as you remove the sprouts. But is this true even if the sprouts are quite big already (see pic)?

Are there any products that could be made with them (ideally without any expensive equipment)? What about fermented or pickled potatoes, does anybody have experience with this? I saw a couple recipes, but they usually require to keep them in the fridge and consume quickly. I do have a lot of empty mason jars, so if they are still edible and I could somehow store them in these at room temperature, that would be great.

Although I don't have animals yet, I will have ducks in about a month. It will probably be already too late this time, but for future occasions: would it be okay to feed the potatoes (cooked and sprouts removed) to ducks (of course in moderation)?

I know they can be cooked and frozen as well, but I don't have that much freezer space.

In case it's best not to eat them anymore, can you give me a bit of advice on how to compost them? Would cooking them before composting make the process faster (it would at least prevent them from growing further)? My current compost heap is not that big and if I put them all in it, it would become the majority of it. So I am thinking of composting them separately in a new heap. I am not sure what the nitrogen to carbon ratio of potatoes is (one source said 10 to 1). Any idea on what materials to add to achieve a good C/N ratio? To be honest, I hate adding potatoes to the compost. They always get stuck on the compost fork and they often roll down from the pile...

Thanks for any advice!

Denis Schwarcz wrote:From what I've read, they are safe to eat as long as you remove the sprouts. But is this true even if the sprouts are quite big already (see pic)?

Hello, Denis! I face the same problem every year. This year seems worse. I have sprouts 2 ft/ 60cm long! I think my storage space is too warm.

Your sprouts are small, and as long as there aren't green areas on the skin (indicating photosynthesis) your potatoes are safe to eat.

You will find that as the sprouts grow, a hard area will form around them and the rest of the potato will become very soft and sometimes start to turn black inside. This indicates that the potato has decided to grow, converting the potato tuber into simple starch (via an enzyme I think?) that feeds the new plant. Even at this point some parts of the potato can be salvaged (discard any green ones and trim away the black stuff and hard areas) to be boiled for calories. (I would consider this useful in hard times.)

Denis Schwarcz wrote:Are there any products that could be made with them (ideally without any expensive equipment)?

Potato vodka is a well known commodity.

Denis Schwarcz wrote:Although I don't have animals yet, I will have ducks in about a month. It will probably be already too late this time, but for future occasions: would it be okay to feed the potatoes (cooked and sprouts removed) to ducks (of course in moderation)?

I don't know about ducks. I do know that my dogs love a little bit of mashed potato as a treat on their regular food.

If you have a neighbour who keeps pigs, perhaps you could make a trade for some bacon?

Denis Schwarcz wrote:In case it's best not to eat them anymore, can you give me a bit of advice on how to compost them? Would cooking them before composting make the process faster (it would at least prevent them from growing further)? My current compost heap is not that big and if I put them all in it, it would become the majority of it. So I am thinking of composting them separately in a new heap. I am not sure what the nitrogen to carbon ratio of potatoes is (one source said 10 to 1). Any idea on what materials to add to achieve a good C/N ratio? To be honest, I hate adding potatoes to the compost. They always get stuck on the compost fork and they often roll down from the pile...

I am experimenting with cooking old potatoes before I put them in the compost. I can mash them after with my shovel. We'll see what happens.

I got the idea from JADAM liquid compost recipes that use cooked potatoes instead of molasses to speed fermentation without inputs that are imported from a long distance away.

Hope this helps!

I forgot to add: my father swore that breaking off the sprouts while they are small would extend the storage life of the potatoes. He did it for 60 years, so I assume he knew what he was talking about. It does seem to work.

Honestly, freezing potatoes is my least favorite way of preserving them; I dont think it does the texture any favors.

Other (better in my opinion) options for processing them for eating later: you can slice (or dice or shred), cook briefly in water, and then dehydrate potatoes, which can then be quickly rehydrated for meals. It is about the same process as prepping them to freeze, but then passive energy storage after that.

I also know that a lot of people pressure can larger pieces of potato into shelf stable jars; I am less personally familiar with the process but have seen it done successfully.

I have always just removed the sprouted part and cooked and eaten them as we usually do.

You also can cut each sprouted part into pieces and plant them.  Or just plant the whole potatoes.

You would make a potato battery though I don't know if the sprouts will affect that:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/a-potato-battery-can-light-up-a-room-for-over-a-month-180948260/

The bin furthest to the left in your photo looks pretty far gone, but the other two don't look so bad.  When the sprouts get this long and summer is coming on, I get pretty surgical and remove a lot of the base area that includes the sprouts.  The remainder of the tuber can be fine....the more firmed fleshed, the better.  We will still use such spuds for mashed, air-fryed potatoes and potato salad. Is your situation one in which you can donate potato "hatchlings" to others in your area for them to start their own crop?  The local farmers around here spread un-used potatoes out on their fields and just till them in for returning the nutrients to the soil.  We toss any unused spuds into a nearby wind-break and they are taken care of by all creaters great and small..... :-)

Good luck!

Mercy Pergande wrote:Other (better in my opinion) options for processing them for eating later: you can slice (or dice or shred), cook briefly in water, and then dehydrate potatoes, which can then be quickly rehydrated for meals. It is about the same process as prepping them to freeze, but then passive energy storage after that.

Yes! I've heard of that but never got around to trying it.

Anne Miller wrote:You would make a potato battery though I don't know if the sprouts will affect that:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/a-potato-battery-can-light-up-a-room-for-over-a-month-180948260/

Wow, cooking the potato produces 10x more electricity? Science is so cool!

Those spuds are ready to go in to the ground....use them as seed spuds.

I usually get sprouted potatoes from dumpsters.
We don't even eat potatoes anymore and the chickens can't eat them all, but I find planting potatoes in my leaf filled beds helps the composting process.