A Kilkenny company is behind a big drive to get more Irish spuds into Irish chippers.
Agronomist Tom Murray from O’Shea’s in Piltown has been telling KCLR about their efforts ahead of today’s World Potato Day.
Most of the chipper chips here have traditionally been imported from the UK and Tom’s explained that a change in how we store our spuds has allowed them to challenge that.
He says “Potato has 20% dry matter and that’s starch that’s within that can turn to sugar once the temperature goes below 8 degrees, when you put that into your fryer that’s what burns, it’s actually the sugar within the potato, so we want to keep the starch up in the potato in order to not have the sugars burning”.
He adds that Irish growers are starting to use the heat of the sun to keep spuds cool with solar power being harnessed.
