From "The Work of the Devil" to Fast Food French Fries: The Wild Story of Potatoes

No matter where you are, it probably hasn't been long since you've had something made with potato. Maybe it's the fries with your burger, a bag of chips while watching a movie, or even the bread for your favorite sandwich, but whatever it was, we can't live without this humble vegetable. In fact, across the entire world, we eat 3 billion of them every single day. But where do they come from? Who first had the idea to pull this out of ground and turn it into dinner? And how did they end up in the cuisine of every corner of the planet? Today, we're taking on the story of the potato, diving into its long and complicated history and unraveling the myths, legends, and characters that brought this everywhere. And of course, we're exploring the dishes that followed its amazing journey from modern cuisine to the very, very beginning. It's hard to imagine a world without potatoes. Nothing is more ubiquitous while at the same time unnoticed. This lump of starchy brown nutrition hiding behind the bounty of mother nature in grocery stores and markets, but honestly, just think about how much it plays a part in everyday life. From fries and chips, to Indian samosas, to Italian gnocchi, Russian vodka, and so much more, it's everywhere. An essential part of our cuisine and our culture. From toys to songs to movies, there they are. It's in our language, a hard worker said to be meat and potatoes unlike the opposite, a lazy couch potato. Billions of people depend on potatoes for survival and it's the only staple found on every continent. Literally. As they're served each day at the research center in Antarctica. But as common and reliable as they might be, it wasn't always that way. Their path has been long and winding, one of the craziest and most important stories in the world of food. So let's get into it, starting at the beginning. In 1911, an American explorer named Hiram Bingham was traveling in the Andes of southern Peru. As he cut through jungle and worked his way higher and higher, suddenly he found himself reaching an isolated peak, overlooking what appeared to be an entire lost city. This of course is what we now call Machu Picchu. The discovery of these ruins captivated the entire world. How was it possible for something like this to have existed in such an extreme location? How could anyone survive here today, much less so long ago in ancient history? Now, I do want to mention that Mr. Bingham was actually a much better marketer than he was explorer. The truth is, the myth of Machu Picchu as a lost city was just a myth, and it was never actually lost. A lot of people knew about it already. The locals could lead anyone there if they asked, and hell, 40 years before Bingham's expedition, Machu Picchu's treasures were being sent around the world by a German mining company in partnership with Peru's government. But that's not why we bring this up. What is relevant to the story is the answer to that common question, how the ancient city 8,000 feet above sea level managed to prosper, and that brings us to the potato. Any story about the people of the Andes Mountains has to begin with this one magical plant, a root vegetable that grows in the toughest climates, providing sustenance and nutrition, literally carbs, protein, fiber, antioxidants, tons of vitamins, iron, and potassium, and all that without any fat or cholesterol. It provides more food per square meter than almost any other crop, a necessity in places where farmland is limited, and if we could travel back in time to the ancient cultures of the Andes, well, we'd find that everything revolved around the potato. The people who once lived at Machu Picchu used potatoes as medicine, as a paste to treat injuries, and even to predict the weather, the plant itself said to show a shift in conditions. And of course, most of all, it was a source of food, the staple that allowed the population to grow. Potatoes were the centerpiece of every meal and of local mythology, with the Incas worshiping a goddess named Ashomama, the daughter of Mother Earth, revered as the giver of potatoes. There were festivals in her honor, feasts to celebrate harvests, and when you imagine those famous Incan ceremonies of sacrifice, well, more often than not, the purpose was to ensure Ashomama's generosity would never waver. And if you somehow found yourself at one of those events and didn't feel like getting sacrificed yourself, well, if you asked one of the natives how long it might take to climb down the mountain, their answer might be mashed potatoes, because time was measured in how long it took to cook a potato in a certain way. Now, we know the potato was vital to the Incas and the people of the region, but why and how that came to be, well, that requires some speculation. See, the problem for us is that all of the great Andean civilizations, the Incas, the Tiwanaku, the Nazca, and the Chimor, well, none of them had a written language. This is why we're also captivated by the so-called mysteries like Machu Picchu and the Nazca Lines. They're only mysteries because they didn't leave us an explanation, and we haven't always been very good at figuring stuff out on our own. And for hundreds of years, that very much applied to the potato as well. But for sake of this story, let's try to start at the very beginning and piece together the few clues we can find from archaeology and modern science to at least attempt to paint a picture of the history of the potato, starting a very long time ago, high up in the Andes Mountains. We begin our story here, in the highlands around a place called Lake Titicaca. To us, it's the and the home to as many as three million people on the banks straddling Peru and Bolivia. But to the Incas, it was the root of everything, the birthplace of the sun and the water from which the first humans once emerged. Now, when it comes to potatoes, this was just part of a wide band from today's Chile to the American Rocky Mountains, where the plant in some form was endemic. But here around the lake, well, that's where they were first domesticated. And it's this version of the plant that all of today's potatoes descend from. By the year 3000 BC, harvested potatoes were sustaining the local population. And given that the examples we find show signs of crossbreeding and genetic evolution, well, it's estimated they were farmed as far back as 10,000 years ago. That would mean the potato would have been domesticated around the same time as figs and wheat on the other side of The people of the Andes didn't just breed potatoes to be bigger or better tasting. They figured out long ago how to make them safe to eat. Because this is the most incredible part of early potato agriculture. In the wild, they're poisonous, a member of a family known as nightshades. Now, nightshades, like tomatoes and tobacco in their natural state, contain alkaloids, some highly toxic to humans, and in the case of potatoes, that's a compound called solanine. We still have no idea how the people of the Andes managed not just to understand this concept, but through selective breeding to reduce the solanine in their potatoes by 95%. And that's not all. Perhaps by observing the local wildlife, Andean people came up with the technique of mixing potatoes with clay before eating, with the minerals in the clay bonding to the alkaloids and rendering even the safe to eat. To this day in remote Andean villages, it's still consumed in this way. Through their cultivation of the potato, the people around Lake Titicaca would create an endless amount of hybrids. And today, of the 5,000 varietals found on earth, almost 70% exist just in this one region, coming in all shapes, colors, and sizes based on where they were grown. The soil, sunlight, temperature, and elevation all creating unique versions of the plant. And of all of their breakthroughs, well the biggest might have been how they used it as food, and how they figured out that potatoes could sustain a population through even the hardest times. When the Spanish arrived, the common misconception is that the Incas were destroyed almost immediately through a combination of violence and disease. But the truth is, there were pockets of resistance. Fortresses like Machu Picchu that would survive another 40 years in isolation. The citizens living behind high walls and surviving on massive stores of potatoes. Or specifically, dried potatoes known as chuño. Now this was perhaps the greatest invention in early agriculture. Something developed before much of the world even learned how to farm. It was a method of preservation that took advantage of the natural environment, basically putting potatoes through a cycle of freezing and thawing, sun drying, and stamping out the last remaining moisture, and ending up with something not unlike styrofoam. A dry and shrunken version of the vegetable that retained its nutritional value and could be rehydrated and cooked after years or even decades. This was the lifeblood of the Andean civilizations. It answers the question of how the people at Machu Picchu managed to live in such harsh conditions, and even today it's considered a critical staple in the villages of Now, if you've never watched one of our history videos before, this is usually when we'd segue into our first break for a meal. But we're in Bangkok, not the highlands of the Andes, and as there are no local restaurants serving chuño, I'm gonna have to make my own. So let's start by taking a trip to the local market. The thing about not living in the South American mountains is that there might be 5,000 kinds of potatoes on earth, but most of us have only ever seen a select few. As soon as we entered the market we found a vendor selling these, which are what's called russet, developed in the 1880s in the United States by a man named Luther Burbank, who would also create hundreds of other plants including the modern daisy. Today his russets make up around 70% of all potatoes sold on earth. Now, when we talk about potatoes, we just mean stuff like this. Not sweet potatoes or yams, which are completely different plants and unrelated to today's topic. Though they do have one connection, the Spanish couldn't tell them apart at first, so they named these patatas, a combination of the Andean words papas and batatas. Anyway, beyond russets, the other breeds of potatoes found in a typical grocery store or wet market would be varietals like red potatoes, which date back to 19th century Europe. Yukon gold crossbred in Canada in 1966, and in recent years something called chingshu number 9, a high-yielding crop from China which is now the world's top potato exporting country. But our quest today is to make chuño, and none of these were bred to make the specialty of the prehistoric Andes. What we're trying to do is the original Peruvian dish, the first ever potato dish, which was made by a series of freezing and then drying potatoes. This is thousands and thousands and thousands of years old. I'm going to try and recreate that. So we're here to get potatoes, and that's what I'm going to do with them. These look different. This might be perfect. This is closer to what you would find, at least in pictures, of that Peruvian dish. A modern potato contains about 80% water, and to make chuño we'll need to reduce that number to zero, freezing, drying, and squishing out the moisture to leave behind something that can hold almost indefinitely, or in our case be cooked into something for us to taste. There are actually two types of chuño, the one we're going to be making and another one, more appetizing in appearance and called white chuño made by leaving potatoes in the current of a running river, for up to a month, then letting them dry in the sun. But even if we had a month, soaking our food in a Bangkok canal doesn't feel like the best idea, so we're going to make do as well as we can. Alright, we're going to revisit this at the end of the video and see how our chuño-making attempt turned out. And if we manage to pull it off, well, we'll get to sample the original specialty of the Andes. But for now, there's a long way to go in the path of the potato, so let's get back to the story. In 1532, Francisco Pizarro and 168 Spanish soldiers invaded what's now the country of Peru, setting in motion the events that would ravage the continent and destroy the Incan civilization. And among the many consequences of this chapter in history, well, this was the first time anyone in the West came in contact with the potato. Now, the thing about destroying an entire civilization is that you lose their knowledge and expertise, and that goes double when they don't have anything in writing. So basically, the Spanish found potatoes but had no idea what to do with them. In the beginning, they were used mainly as sailors' rations, food meant to sustain the slaves and low-level workers on Spanish navy and merchant ships. And when those ships would arrive in port, well, they'd offer potatoes for sale, marketed primarily as pig feed. The first Spanish plantation where they'd grow their own potatoes was in the colony of the Canary Islands, off the coast of Morocco, from where, starting in 1567, they'd take them on boats fanning out across the old world. But sold next to the treasures of the Americas, fascinating and beautiful plants with unique and entrancing flavors, again, the potato was hardly in demand. It would take 20 years after the first Canary Islands plantation before anyone saw potential in this new crop, and that wouldn't happen in Europe, at least at first. In fact, it would take a long and winding course before the potato ended up in the right hands. But when it did, it would prove to be game-changing. And this brings us all the way to the other side of the world, to China, under the Ming Dynasty. Alright, to explain why potatoes found a home in China before anywhere else, we have to look at one important constant in the Middle Kingdom. Not the language or the Confucian culture, but instead, the fact that the land is prone to droughts and famines. There have been more than 2,000 recorded since the first Chinese empire, and the 16th century was an especially bleak time. We'll pick up in the year 1588, northeast China's just emerging from the so-called Wanli megadrought, and there was so much unrest stemming from widespread starvation that the Ming Dynasty was on the ropes, facing protests and political upheaval. Now by this point, the Ming had led China for more than two centuries. In many ways, they'd overseen a period of prosperity, influence across Asia, and explorations on the greatest boats the world had ever seen. But nothing turns a population against its leadership faster than a lack of food, and Wanli was freeing nerves in the Forbidden City. After all, this hadn't hit some far-flung province. Beijing was right in the middle of the crisis. And then when things looked hopeless, with food rationed and rice crops failing, a new plant appeared like a lightning bolt, dense and heavy, and perfectly suited for China's cold northeast. It arrived via Dutch traders, who'd picked up their potatoes from the Spanish at the trading ports of Java. And right away, the Chinese knew this was a big deal. They'd call them tu dou, the bean from the earth, and they'd use it not as pig food, but to sustain everyone from the humblest farmers to the Ming emperors themselves. It would catch on with every social class, become incorporated into ancient recipes, and when the next famine came, the 17-year-long Chongzhen drought, well this time, a lot more people would survive. Except the Ming dynasty, who the public blamed for another crisis and threw them out as soon as the drought ended. Anyway, the irony of all this is that because potatoes were so crucial to surviving those hard times, there would be pushback, which is why you might not think of them today as a common Chinese staple. See, in the last years of the Ming, potatoes had been so ubiquitous that rice and noodles practically disappeared from the common diet, and when times got better and those staples were available again, a lot of Chinese swore that they would never touch another potato, since that's basically all they'd ever known. As a result, the story of the potato after the 16th century shifts back to Europe. But let's just stay in China for another second. See, potatoes might have lost their favor with the common people, but the Qing who took over from the Ming, well, they also understood its value and continued to use it in palace cuisine. Eventually, those palace dishes would filter out to the public, and today, well, traditional Chinese food maintains a number of ancient potato dishes. And that brings us to our first meal. Potatoes might not be front and center in Chinese cuisine, but you can find them all across the mountainous parts of the country. From the slices seasoned and grilled as part of Chinese barbecue, to the incredible Xinjiang Da Pan Ji, to Shandong's famous Di San Xian, which translates to three treasures from the earth. In the case of this restaurant, the cuisine leans northeastern to the region along the Russian and Mongolian border. But since this is Thailand, it also incorporates dishes from far and wide, showcasing a wide range of potato techniques. You know, when you think about potatoes, it's a Dongbei thing. It's a northeastern thing for the most part in China, just based on where it grows and where it's most incorporated in the cuisine. In Bangkok, most Chinese restaurants are either southern or the cooks come from Yunnan, which is along the southeast Asian border. This is one of those places where it's a Yunnan restaurant, but they have northeastern dishes. So this, Grandma's Potatoes, is a Yunnan dish. The rest of these are more northeastern. And you eat, eat, eat. It's fine. You are making me nervous with that. And then this, so basically like, this classic braised beef with potato stir-fry. They don't actually use potatoes in their recipe for the Yunnan version on this menu, but they did for us. Potatoes, which are cut into strips, almost like French fries, in a sizzling hot pan, which has stopped sizzling, but it's in a warm pan. And the ubiquitous strings of grated potato, which I think are just lightly blanched with a little pepper. And that's an appetizer you see everywhere in Chinese food. So, and then this is just, this is just bread, because again, Daria lost a little control when it came to ordering. Look, this is a complete meal. We have potatoes in a hot pan, braised beef with potatoes, mashed potatoes, and I haven't even tasted these yet to see how they're good. It's very good. It's hard to mess up. While the Chinese were growing potatoes to stave off famine, back in Europe, where the plant first arrived, well, most of the focus wasn't on its uses, but on its dangers. See, the idea of nightshades as a poisonous plant was already well-established, and so a lot of countries passed laws forbidding the consumption of anything in that family. But the real reason potatoes didn't catch on wasn't health. It was religion. Let me explain. Now, first of all, the fact that potatoes looked like disfigured human faces led to something of a 16th century panic, with churches declaring that these must be the work of the devil. This was reinforced by the fact that they grew underground, closer to hell. Pamphlets were published across the Holy Roman Empire warning that contact with potatoes might cause syphilis, tuberculosis, even leprosy. They were said to lead to infertility, or the exact opposite, an intense and ungodly desire for unspeakable sin. To the English, the sight of shriveled potatoes drying in the sun led to their association with witchcraft, and in Russia, well, the hysteria of the Orthodox Church reached a whole new level, as it was said that potatoes were the scion of the union between a dog and this is a family channel, so we'll just leave it there. Anyway, thankfully, at least in terms of the plant's long-term survival, the Europeans didn't apply their fears to their colonial subjects, so they happily planted them throughout their overseas territories as a cheap and easy way to feed the masses. After all, when it comes to foreign savages, well, who cares about a little nightshade poisoning or the risk of eternal damnation? The upshot of this was that by the middle of the 1600s, potatoes were incorporated into the cuisine of India, from where they'd spread to northern Southeast Asia by way of the mountains of Myanmar. They were introduced to Africa by the Portuguese, the Dutch, and the French, never mind the fact that they were banned at the time in all three countries. The English would send them to Ireland, although we'll talk more about that later, and the Spanish even planted potatoes in the New World, bringing them right back to where they started. In the end, even though the path of the potato begins in Europe, it would take a very long time before it would find a widespread following on the continent itself. But when that would happen, well, it would explode with such intensity, spread through society at such a breakneck speed that it would change the world in ways that still affect all of us every day. And this brings us to the next part of our story. It's the 1750s, and Europe has fallen into a period of chaos. Almost every part of the continent is involved in what we now call the Seven Years War. The countryside is being trampled by rampaging armies, and borders and colonies are shifting and changing hands as battles are won and lost. When the fighting began, King Frederick the Great of Prussia found himself facing attacks from both the French and Russians. His military was overextended, and with his ports blockaded, his first concern was starvation, as his soldiers were running out of the flour that they needed to make bread. He'd need to come up with a solution. If he seized the wheat grown by his peasants, then he might face an uprising, and he didn't have the spare forces to deal with something like that. So this would take some creative thinking. For inspiration, he looked to the past, to the days of the old Columbian Exchange, when his grandfather, Frederick I, had planted potatoes in the royal garden. Now these, of course, were not meant as food, but instead as flowers. But still, there they were, and looking at the flowers outside his window, Frederick realized the answer might be under his nose. So on March 24th, 1756, he'd issue a proclamation. The country was to immediately turn to potato farming, and those potatoes would be the new staple of the peasant class. They would have their food, and the army would be free to confiscate all the wheat. Now, as you might expect, this was met with some resistance, but Frederick was determined. In the end, he'd issue a full 15 decrees pushing potato farming, and to win support, he'd even turn to propaganda, coining slogans like potatoes instead of truffles, and most famously, stationing an armed guard outside his potato garden with instructions to let thieves sneak in. The word quickly got around that this stuff must be really good if the king valued it so highly. And what really helped potatoes catch on was when the war reached German soil, and invading armies ransacked peasants' land looking for food. They stole grains and vegetables, but since potatoes grew underground, well, they'd remain untouched, an unexpected benefit that made this crop invaluable in a smash hit. As the tide turned in the war, and Frederick's troops gained the upper hand, they won battle after battle and took enemy prisoners, including in one case a Frenchman named Antoine-Augustin Parmentier. Now, to this point, there was nothing remarkable about Monsieur Parmentier. He was a pharmacist by trade around 27 years old, conscripted into the army to serve as a medic. All he'd known about the potato was what he'd heard back home, that it caused leprosy and horrible diseases, and was only suitable for animals. But while he was held in Frederick's German prison, well, Parmentier was fed potatoes every day, and when he was released, he realized he was fine, healthy, so he got to work. He re-enrolled in school in pursuit of a degree in nutritional chemistry. He devoted himself to promoting the benefits of potatoes, and whenever French society had any problems, well, there he was promoting the potato as a solution, winning award after award and gaining widespread recognition. By 1772, nine years after he was released from captivity, the French government would declare potatoes safe to eat, and by 1789, Parmentier was publishing potato-themed cookbooks with the royal stamp of the king himself. And as France and Germany prospered, the rest of the continent soon followed, and potatoes were growing everywhere. King Frederick the Great would be remembered through history as the potato king, and to this day, they're left on his gravestone in tribute to his legacy. And Parmentier would become such an icon in French cuisine that a great number of the country's potato dishes are named in his honor. One last side note, by the way, the French king who gave his blessing to Parmentier's work, well, that was Louis XVI. The same Louis XVI who would be overthrown in the French Revolution. Now, in the common telling of that story, the real villain was supposedly his wife, Marie Antoinette, described as some version of Littlefinger who was actually behind the scenes pulling the strings. Now, this is probably overblown, and she might not have gotten a fair shake from history, but when it comes to her husband's acceptance of potatoes, well, that was actually all her. See, the queen had been so captivated by Parmentier and his plans to cure hunger that she decided to promote his work by wearing a potato flower as a decoration whenever she'd appear in public. She pushed her husband to do the same, and by the 1780s, the king too was pinning potato blossoms to his outfits to show his approval of the plant. In other words, we don't know this for sure, but it's almost certain that both Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were wearing potato flowers when they were led to the guillotine. Let's go have some French food. The use of potatoes is common in cuisines around the world, but for the French, it's a necessity. Maybe not a centerpiece, but what else could serve as a side and soak up those legendary French sauces like a dish that's made with potato? All three preparations we ordered date back to the days of Parmentier, all appearing in French cookbooks in the 18th century. There's the French fries, served in a classic style as a side for the steak tartare. There's potatoes sautéed with herbs, paired here with the beef wellington. And au gratin, or baked with cheese and cream, which owes its start to Duke Charles Henri of Clermont, a devoted follower of Parmentier himself all the way back in 1788. How is it? I should have had a bite of potatoes first for the sake. I forgot this is a potato video. Let's try the potatoes. So this is going to be baked in the oven in a little ramekin like this with cheese and a lot of cream and most likely butter, which is the correct way to go. We're going to hibernate for like a week after this shoot. We have a long way to go today. I'm like 60% potatoes now and 20% raw meat. This is, Daria is on the verge of just completely losing control. Potatoes bring on... I've never heard of such a Thai person. You can just use a fork and a spoon. In the years that followed the work of Frederick the Great and Parmentier, Europe became the world's center of potato farming. But there were a couple of holdouts who weren't quite ready to let go of old superstition. Now the potato, to be fair, hadn't gotten off to the best start in England when it first arrived with the Spanish. One of its earliest believers was a British statesman Sir Walter Raleigh, who happened to have the ear of Queen Elizabeth I. Now, Raleigh wasn't one to fall for myths and legends, so he immediately saw the potential in the plant. Well, let's say he didn't fall for all myths and legends, as he would eventually spend his older years searching for the golden city of El Dorado. Anyway, Raleigh arranged to have some of the first potatoes delivered from the Canary Islands presented to the Queen herself, and a dinner was arranged in its honor. The problem was nobody told the chefs how to prepare the meal, so they cooked the poisonous leaves and threw away the, well, the potatoes. Everyone got sick, and the Queen never allowed a potato in her presence again. Almost 200 years later, as the plant spread everywhere, England still had its hesitations, this time because of religion. See, the growing popularity in France and Spain led to a belief that potatoes were Catholic, and that somehow their introduction might invite papal spies into the kingdom. A 1765 political slogan declared, no potatoes, no potpourri, and the next year King George III went as far as to officially recognize the Vatican, in large part to convince his subjects to just eat the damn potatoes. At the same time, a similar drama would be playing out in Tsarist Russia, although this would have an even wilder ending. See, after losing battles to the potato-fueled Germans, Catherine the Great issued her own order recommending farmers to cultivate the plant, but given the skepticism of the Orthodox Church, this was generally ignored. It would stay that way for another 60 years until Nicholas I decided to change the recommendation to a mandate to stave off famine and potential rebellion. It would have the opposite effect. A rumor spread throughout the Russian countryside that this edict was actually a law forcing farmers into slavery, where they'd be shipped off to labor camps and made to farm potatoes for the upper class. Now this was insane, but enough people believed it that a wave of protests would rip through the country, peasants ransacking government offices and taking both politicians and church officials hostage, and it would take a full year for the army to put down the rebellions. At which point the edict was withdrawn, and ironically enough, feeling like they'd won a victory against the Tsar, Russian farmers began planting potatoes as a symbol of their new power, and within a year they'd be a staple crop across much of the country. As all of Europe fell for the potato, its path around the rest of the world would be instantaneous. In what's now the United States, where they'd explode thanks to Thomas Jefferson, who served them at state dinners in the White House. Potato seeds were sent with prisoners on a so-called First Fleet to Australia, and would fast become a staple crop. And since they were now in fashion, well, they'd also hitch a ride almost everywhere on European trading boats. But the main impact would happen on the home continent. In the 50 years that followed Frederick the Great's edict, the European population would double from 100 to 200 million, and great cities prospered. London, Paris, St. Petersburg. Great powers expanded their empires, and wealth was concentrated in all of it. Well, it all began with a shift to potatoes, and the sudden absence of hunger. It's even agreed among historians that the Industrial Revolution, the beginning of today's modern society, was only made possible because of the conditions that came from potato farming. And it wasn't just the cities and countries and bank accounts that got bigger. Even the people did, with a French study showing that those raised on potatoes grew to stand half an inch taller than those who were fed other foods. For the people of Europe, it felt like the good times would never end. Living in modernizing cities with increasing conveniences and low unemployment and food, enough for everyone for the first time in the continent's history. But on an island to the northwest, well, something was about to happen that would change the world forever. The first potatoes arrived in Europe by the year 1567. It would be 189 years before Frederick the Great's proclamation and another half century before potatoes were widespread. But the whole time, unnoticed, a tiny island ignored as a backwater English colony had become, completely on its own, the best in the world at cultivating potatoes. While the rest of the continent still believed they caused syphilis or eternal damnation, the Irish were crossbreeding new varieties, establishing traditions and developing a new cuisine based around the potato. Part of this was because of the climate, perfectly suited for the Andean version of the plant. But mainly this all started thanks to an English policy banning Irish farmers from owning land, forcing them to rent small plots too small to grow enough wheat or barley to survive. When the potatoes arrived, it turned out that in Irish soil, their yields were so high that a single acre of farmland planted with potatoes and housing one milk cow was said to be enough to feed a family of eight. Like the Incas, the Irish learned to maximize harvests. And also like the Incas, they built a new mythology, planting crops each year on Good Friday, sprinkling the field with holy water on Ascension Day and pulling the harvest on Saint's Day. Times were good in the Emerald Isle, but as you can probably guess, this is not a happy story. What comes next would begin in 1813, when a British chemist named Humphry Davy published a book on techniques for growing better harvests. This book would become a smash hit, translated into languages from French to Russian, the best-selling book ever written on the subject of farming. Among his breakthroughs was the idea that plants grew better with nitrogen as a fertilizer. And as the best source of nitrogen, he recommended something called guano, essentially bird waste. Now, as a side note, this turned out to be one more thing the Spanish could have learned from the Incas if they'd just asked, because that's exactly how they used to grow their potatoes. And not coincidentally, the largest deposits of guano were on small islands just off Peru's coast. Anyway, the race was on to raid the Peruvian islands with cargo ships speeding back and forth to Europe. And on one of those ships, well, there was something else hitching a ride as well. It was a microorganism with a scientific name of Phytophthora infestans, in Latin translating more or less to the destroyer of plants, especially nightshades like potatoes. The first outbreak on the European continent took place in Belgium in 1845. From there, it spread to France, Germany, Denmark, and the Netherlands, then across the water to England and Ireland. Now, the sad irony of what was to come is that the same advances made by the Irish also made them uniquely susceptible to blight. See, most of their harvests were clones, a monoculture of high-yielding plants cut and replanted across much of the island, fertile ground for a disease to spread uncontested. Within two months of the first reports of pea infestans on Irish soil, more than a half million acres of farmland had been lost, and it would continue to progress until the country was left almost barren. Before the blight, Ireland had a population of around eight and a half million. By the time it was over in 1852, only half of that number remained, with as many as two million dead and another two million having fled abroad. Even today, Ireland is quite possibly the only country on earth with a lower population than it had within the same borders in the 1840s. The potato blight would devastate the entirety of Europe, but its impact on Ireland was especially tragic. This was also made worse by the ruling British, who even when the crisis was at its worst, continued to export millions of tons of Irish food across the water to London. To this day, the Irish potato famine remains a defining point in the country's history, but not only for the reasons that we've mentioned. With anger building towards the crown, rebel groups would form and the wheels would be set in motion, charting a course that led directly, after 800 years of English rule, to Ireland's independence. And the Irish people would reclaim the potato, not as a reminder of tragedy, but as a symbol of national pride, of resilience and heritage. And this brings us to our next meal. Shepherd's pie. And as always, help yourself, you can feel free to dive in. And this is the beef and Guinness stew. And obviously, if this was like a game of GeoGuessr, or one of those things where, you know, you have to kind of figure out, where are we? I mean, like, the context clues are here. This is obviously an Irish bar. And I was good. I missed this stuff. I haven't had this years. For really saucy foods for things that are made with kind of like a gravy or a sauce. Potato just it's kind of a perfect platform for it's like bread, but it doesn't doesn't get soggy. You know, it's just a perfect way to this is I'm analyzing I'm analyzing the food right now. Don't distract me. Let you in on a little OTR secret. I understand that this may cause some of you to abandon the channel. I don't I don't like Guinness. Not safe for work. I like beer that tastes like beer. Did you have Guinness in Ireland? Of course, it's different. See, you gain 5% of followers back. All right, Boris, time for you to eat. Wow, we've smashed this. All right, a few final words on the Irish potato famine before we move on because we need to For one thing, there were the demographic changes that came from a quarter of Ireland's population leaving. As just one example, by 1850, there were more Irish in New York City than in Dublin. Then there's geopolitics. Now, the blight might have done the worst damage in Ireland, but it did cause more than 100,000 deaths on the continent. And as a result, the farmers began rising up against the ruling class. What began in one Italian city would soon turn into the first-ever global revolution. Protests against the rich spreading as far as Senegal, Chile, and Canada. A lot of governments would fall. Slavery would be outlawed in multiple countries, and the entire political world would change. The potato famine led to the development of the first industrial-grade pesticides, setting a course that would kick into overdrive thanks to another potato crisis 40 years later, this time so-called potato beetles in the United States. And before long, we were spraying our food with arsenic, DDT, and an endless list of insecticides, herbicides, fungicides, organophosphates, and vine desiccants. But there was one thing that didn't change, which was our dependence on guano as fertilizer. In fact, just four years after the famine ended, the United States passed a law allowing any uninhabited guano-producing island anywhere on Earth to be annexed. In all, the U.S. would add 100 islands and atolls to its territory, and their use as footholds in the Pacific would be considered the trigger to a new era of American military expansion. The potato in the hands of the Western powers might have left behind a complicated legacy, but the one thing that can't be argued is it also dramatically changed our cuisine. So finally, let's talk about food. In 1795, just 23 years after Parmentier legalized potatoes, an anonymous French author, in truth the mother of the publisher, released a book of 31 potato-based recipes. And while the collection proved a wealth of culinary knowledge, the dish that's best remembered was the simplest of them all. Strips of potato fried in oil and seasoned with salt. The first record of the French fry. Now over the next decades, France and Belgium would argue about the actual origins with the truth impossible to prove, but what is clear is how the French fry went mainstream, beginning in 1921 when a shop in Kansas called White Castle became the first to pair burgers and fries. Today, 11 million tons are eaten every single year. That's just slightly more than the 7 million tons of potato chips, which are credited to a Mr. George Crum of Saratoga, New York. According to the legend, in 1853 he was cooking at a resort when the tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt ordered fried potatoes. He sent them back to the kitchen complaining they were too thick, so Crum took his revenge, and a new icon was born. Now some say the resort was making chips for years before George Crum, but either way, by now it's canon. Mashed potatoes might be one of the world's only true global foods, with variations endemic to countries from Portugal to China, India to Kenya, but the first written recipe comes from England, specifically Hannah Glass's influential 1747 cookbook. Potato pancakes are the only food considered to be the national dish of four different countries, Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, and Slovakia. These evolved in the late 18th century from an ancient specialty called latkes, previously made with grated cheese or vegetables and a favorite of Eastern Europe's Ashkenazi Jews. And potato salad, at least the version we know in the U.S., is actually from Germany, quite possibly created in the kitchen of Frederick the Great himself. Now, when we're talking about beloved potato dishes, this is nowhere close to a comprehensive list. There are countless uses of potatoes with unique origin stories, from Russia's Olivier salad to Korean gamja-jorim to the Indian vada pav, and more in just about every country and culture. And that's not even mentioning older foods adapted since the 18th century to showcase the potato. From samosas to knishes, pierogies, croquettes, and then there are the items made with potato flour, like potato rolls and potato buns, and if you've ever had a spudnut then you know it's the greatest donut ever. What I'm trying to say is, I know, there's a lot we won't be able to get to. It's the potato. The world consumes almost 375 million metric tons per year. That's a trillion potatoes grown and harvested from Norway to Argentina and every country has put their own stamp on this ingredient. We can't cover everything. But still, we need to try to do our best to showcase the international magic of this one humble plant. And so for our next meal, well, we're heading to a place unlike anywhere else, a one-of-a-kind fusion restaurant by one of the best chefs in the world. This is a restaurant that could only be the brainchild of Gagan Anand, a completely off-the-wall place based on the fictional love story of Miss Maria and Mr. Singh. Now, to quickly explain the chef, well, he's simply one of the best on the planet. Born in Calcutta, trained under Farhan Adria, he opened his first establishment in Bangkok in 2007. His playful and sometimes absurd takes on food ticked off the fine dining mainstream, but it didn't matter, as it would rise to the number one spot in the Asia Top 50 for three straight years. He'd close that first place in 2020 and reopen a new venue named Gagan Anand, more personal and even more playful, and that currently sits at number nine in the entire world. And upstairs, his passion project, Indian-Mexican fusion, unpretentious but with all the hallmarks of culinary genius. Both Indian and Mexican food feature potatoes prominently, from the Mexican papasi chorizo tacos to the Indian aloo curries, and here, we find it in three preparations. Stuffed inside the so-called sampanadas, a combination samosa empanada, cooked in the Indian aloo choka style and paired with prawns in a taco, and the most mind-blowing, piped in as a compliment to grilled chicken in a Peruvian juan caína style that pays tribute to where it all began. Alright, so far the path of the potato has taken us all across the world, through history and cuisine and some incredible potato dishes, but this whole time, well, back home, we've been making chunyo, our attempt at the oldest preparation of potato known anywhere on earth. Now, Bangkok is obviously not the Andes. We don't have nighttime frost, and we don't have thousands of years of knowledge on how to make chunyo perfectly, but we're not ones to shy away from a challenge. So for eight days and eight nights, our potatoes were in and out of the freezer. Into the Thailand sunshine and danced on by Daria, and then the next day, the same thing all over again. This was not a passive process. By day four, it had become an obsession, and as the week went on, well, preserving my potatoes became the only thing that mattered. I cancelled social plans, got behind on script writing, and like any good parent, I put my potatoes ahead of my own health and needs. If you want to see the entire process, I'll put up a longer version of this part on Patreon, but the moral of the story is, with the last moisture evaporated, and our potatoes now the size of golf balls, the moment had arrived, and it was time to rehydrate the chunyo, and start to cook. For a dish to showcase our chunyo, I'm making a soup using only ingredients endemic to the Andes and also available at Klontoi Market. This means we're using fresh potato to go along with the chunyo, corn, of course, the other staple of that part of the world, and since we can't get green beans, we'll use long beans which are Asian, but hey, it's as close as we can get. It's all seasoned only with salt, and on this rock, we will build our church. It's kind of exciting, it's like after eight days of babysitting my chunyo, it's cooking, it's cooking, it's like we have made it. All right, the moment of truth has arrived, so you know that I'm not faking this. Here is a piece of chunyo, and I have spent eight days treating this like my child, and this is not without risk. I'm not recommending you to do this at home, especially if you live in a hundred degree heat like we do, but I will try it. Another crazy thing after all this time, after so many days of sitting in the sun, getting frozen overnight, reducing to 20% of its original size, coming out looking oxidized, blackened, shriveled, shrunken, hard as a rock, rehydrating it, and then putting it in the soup. You know what it tastes like? Honestly, Daria, you know what it tastes like? A potato. It is so, if you close your eyes and try it, I think because of the texture, it's a little crunchier, a little crunchier, but I don't think you would know the difference in taste or... Easy. Seriously, I want you to try it. Honestly, it's good. It tastes like a potato. I'm super pumped about this. So, can I have a really happy reaction? No, it's good. It's okay. It worked. Success. Success? Success. In 1987, two researchers published a paper on a remarkable find at the Monte Verde dig site in Chile, near the southern tip of South America. According to their analysis of what appeared to be a fire pit, they identified compounds of a familiar looking starch. And what's crazy is this find was dated as far back as 18,000 BC, 10,000 years before the first Peruvian potatoes show up in the archaeological record. Now, this would cause some controversy, and to this day, there's no scientific consensus if these were actually potatoes grown for human consumption. But if they're right, well, it would change not only our knowledge of the plant, but of the entire world, proving that there were people living in advanced societies in America long before previously understood. And it's not just the Chilean find that's turning potato knowledge on its head. As far north as Utah in the western United States, evidence of possible domestication of potatoes turned up in 2017 at a site dating back 11,000 years. And to this day, well, we're still learning more about it, with fragments showing up in more and more places on grinding stones and storage basins. And what might be even wilder is that evidence shows that just like the Incas, Native Americans also understood how to mix their potatoes with clay to counteract the toxins. Now, the species found in Chile and Utah are not the same as the modern potato. They're distant cousins of the one that by now we all know, Solanum tuberosum, which did indeed spread from the Andes Mountains to the rest of the world. But what it shows is that the more we learn about early society, the more we understand that the in many ways was made possible by the potato. It let us survive hard times and allowed our cities to grow. It shaped our cuisine and our economy, and it continues to make an outsized impact on our world, very much to the present. It's in our language, with a hot potato a complicated issue, couch potatoes staying at home, and if something doesn't matter, it's just small potatoes. A 1976 trade war between potato growers crashed the New York Mercantile Exchange, leading the futures market to shift instead to another commodity, oil. You can find potatoes in pop culture, from the works of Shakespeare and Van Gogh, to the singer James Brown, and even as Sam's favorite food in Lord of the Rings. If you grew up any time after the 1950s, you probably played with Mr. Potato Head, or shot a potato out of a cannon, or made one into a clock for a science project. It's the primary staple for much of the planet, and in the country of Belarus, the average citizen eats a pound of potatoes every single day. There are at least 15 dedicated potato museums from Canada to Lithuania, and we're still discovering new uses for the plant, from defogging our glasses to polishing silverware to removing broken light bulbs. And in 1995, potatoes became the first plant ever cultivated in outer space, the first vegetable grown at zero gravity, because if humanity ever has to leave this planet, well if we want to survive, we better have potatoes. Subscribe to the channel for more from OTR, thanks so much to everyone who supports us on Patreon, it really helps to keep us going. Find links below to our Patreon and social media, and we'll see you soon. Next door are just seeing this plate go outside, and I'm the only foreigner who lives on the street, so I think the question is, you know, the assumption is I'm just doing this, I'm just doing this foreign thing, that's what we do, we just take disgusting looking potatoes and put them, uh, put them on the street every day.