Vegetable Varieties for Gardeners is a citizen science program





'Russet Burbank' Potatoes
 
Sub-Category: Late Season
 
Sub-Category 2:
Description: Very late season. Long, heavy tubers with russeted skin and dry, mealy, white flesh. Excellent storage. Resistant to blackleg and fusarium and high resistance to scab. Also known as Idaho Potato.
Days To Maturity: 90-120
Seed Sources:
 
Rating Summary
 
Overall: (3.2 Stars)Overall
Taste: (3.2 Stars)Taste
Yield: (3.6 Stars)Yield
Ease/Reliability: (3.6 Stars)Ease/Reliability
 
Reviews
 
Login to share your Review of Russet Burbank.

Number of Reviews: 5

Sort Reviews By:
  [Help]
KEY: O=Overall Rating, T=Taste, Y=Yield, E=Ease

Reviewed on 06/27/2012 by Ferdzy - An intermediate gardener

Overall Overall
Taste Taste
Yield Yield
Ease/Reliability Ease

Ontario, Canada
Frost Free Season: 143 - 163 days
Soil Texture: Sand
Garden Size: Large - More than 1,600 square feet (40' x 40')
Sun Exposure: More than 8 hours per day

I love these potatoes with a love that is deep and true. They store better than almost any other potato we have grown. (Tied with Pink Fir Apple.) They are large and nicely shaped. They produce well. In 2011 we got 33 pounds from a 5\' by 6\' bed, plus another 100 pounds from a wooden box, where we planted them then topped them up with earth every 3 days once they started growing. That box was 4\' by 8\' and we filled it to about the 2 foot mark. They were THE baking and frying potato of the 20th century, and I still think them very delicious. They are also just fine boiled and mashed.
 
1 of 1 gardener found this review helpful.  

Reviewed on 09/01/2010 by bren - An intermediate gardener

Overall Overall
Taste Taste
Yield Yield
Ease/Reliability Ease

Clinton, Michigan, United States
Frost Free Season: 103 - 123 days
Soil Texture: Not Sure
Garden Size: Large - More than 1,600 square feet (40' x 40')
Sun Exposure: More than 8 hours per day

Most of the seed potatoes that I planted didn't come up. Will try again, I don't think it was the weather or soil as all the other potatoes that I grew did well
 

Reviewed on 08/15/2010 by YorkerJenny - An intermediate gardener

Overall Overall
Taste Taste
Yield Yield
Ease/Reliability Ease

Onondaga, New York, United States
Frost Free Season: 123 - 143 days
Soil Texture: Clay
Garden Size: Large - More than 1,600 square feet (40' x 40')
Sun Exposure: More than 8 hours per day

Maybe it's great to freeze for McDonalds, but to grow in the backyard, it doesn't have an unforgetable taste like russet norkotah. This is year we had a lot less rain and hot weather, so potatoes went crazy. I sowed 10pd and got 90pd. For this climate, I don't do anything, I sow and forget them until to pick them up. It rains time to time anyway. Potatoes big and good oval shape. I'm looking for the best of the best taste potatoes, so this is not my favorite.
 
1 of 1 gardener found this review helpful.  

Reviewed on 03/17/2006 by NWL - An experienced gardener

Overall Overall
Taste Taste
Yield Yield
Ease/Reliability Ease

Oxford, Maine, United States
Frost Free Season: 103 - 123 days
Soil Texture: Clay
Garden Size: Large - More than 1,600 square feet (40' x 40')
Sun Exposure: More than 8 hours per day

Very disease resistant. Easy to grow, however due to it being a very late variety, some years the ground will be somewhat frozen on the surface by the time that it is ready to be pulled
 
1 of 1 gardener found this review helpful.  

Reviewed on 03/19/2005 by skiman - An experienced gardener

Overall Overall
Taste Taste
Yield Yield
Ease/Reliability Ease

Franklin, New York, United States
Frost Free Season: 103 - 123 days
Soil Texture: Loam
Garden Size: Large - More than 1,600 square feet (40' x 40')
Sun Exposure: More than 8 hours per day

Though currently in slow decline, Russet Burbank continues to dominate the North American potato market with somewhere between 30 and 40 percent market share, a position it has held since the late 1960s. A bit of history: Contrary to common belief, Luther Burbank did not breed, that is, make the cross resulting in the Russet Burbank. Rather, in 1871, he noticed a seedball on a single potato plant in his patch of Early Rose potatoes which do not normally produce seedballs. What he had noticed was a natural, spontaneous mutation of Early Rose, and for that, he ought to be given his just due--for no other reason than for recognizing this for what it was--a spontaneous mutation. He saved the seedball, dried the seeds, and the next year, he planted them to see what he would get. He got 23 plants of what turned out to be smooth-skinned, long-white potatoes quite different from Early Rose and which he decided were worth saving and scaling up for commercial production. He saved the tubers from the two plants with highest yields and reproduced them over subsequent years. In 1874 he sold most of his tubers to Massachusetts seedsman, J.J.H. Gregory for $150 and moved to California with the remainder (approx. 10 tubers). These potatoes subsequently became known as the variety Burbank after being marketed for several years as Burbank's Seedling. Despite the promotion of Burbank's Seedling in the Northeast by J.J.H. Gregory and others, Burbank's Seedling only became commercially important in California, Oregon and Washington during subsequent years, due far more to Burbank's efforts than Gregory's. Then the next step: most official reports suggest that in 1914, Lou Sweet of Denver, Colorado, discovered in his garden, a sport of potato variety Burbank with russeted skin--yet another of the very rare spontaneous potato mutations with beneficial results. The next spring, Sweet planted the russeted tubers of Burbank, and in subsequent years increased them to saleable volume. Though for a time, this mutation was known as California Russet, Cambridge Russet, Golden Russet, and Netted Gem, it later became known as the Russet Burbank, which except for its russeted skin, is genetically identical to Burbank. For the next several decades, both Burbank and Russet Burbank, known then, mostly as Burbank and Netted Gem, languished as relatively minor commercial varieties because no one could figure out how to grow them reliably for commercial markets. Both yielded knobby, ill-shapen, not particularly merchantable tubers of various sizes, both of which were susceptible to all the common potato diseases. And neither had any sort of distinctive flavor other than bland. One might wonder why growers of the time continued to grow them? Please know there is no real documentation for when the russeted version of Burbank appeared. Indeed, when William Stuart was attempting to figure out the origins of Russet Burbank, he found reports of it having originated in 1900, 1908, 1914. . . in Colorado, in California . . . and elsewhere. Somehow, Stuart chose 1914 and Lou Sweet, probably for no other reason than this was the last (most recent) date on the list of its probable origin. To this day, no one really knows who discovered the Russet Burbank or when or where. Yet, Lou Sweet gets the official attribution. Decades later, during WWII, several events came together to drive potato markets to Russet Burbank. J.R. (Jack) Simplot used Russet Burbank potatoes to supply dehydrated potatoes to the U.S. military all through the war. He made millions, single-handedly supplying a full one third of the dehydrated potatoes and onions to the U.S. military. But when the war ended, and the need for dehydrated potatoes and onions suddenly disappeared, he quite nearly went bankrupt. Even his father called in his pre-war business loans. Simplot struggled to make payroll as the dehydrated potato and onion dried up. Fortunatety, in 1942, he had hired a food chemist, Ray Dunlap. A few years later, Dunlap asked Simplot to buy him a freezer so he could figure out how to freeze a french fried potato. By this simple request, the french fry industry was forever changed. By 1946, Ray Dunlap had come up with a primitive method of freezing a french fry, and shortly thereafter, Simplot began offering them to consumers in their local markets. Being the entrepreneur that he was, he naturally assumed that frozen french fries would 'take off'. He invested heavily on this premise. But even so, regardless Simplot's initial assumption, this premise remained a hard sell in the marketplace. This was before supermarkets, before household freezers, before frozen foods. The years from 1947 through 1950 were extremely difficult for Simplot. Yet he persevered under difficult cash flow circumstances. Please know that at the same time, Simplot was also exploiting the existing fresh market for Russet Burbank as a baking and as a mashing potato as promoted by the Idaho Potato Commission. He had a cash flow to maintain for no other reason than to meet payroll. The latter organization worked incessantly to promote the Russet Burbank as the world's most perfect potato for baking and mashing. Over the years, they would seem to have convinced consumers that the Russet Burbank is the best baking and mashing potato to be found anywhere in the world. In reality, this is simply not true--it is a marketing ploy, one that has been working for the Idaho Potato Commission for at least the past forty years. Yet, we, who are paying attention, all know that Russet Burbank as a baked or mashed potato has no particular or distinctive flavor despite what the Idaho Potato Commission says. This is the reason why we all seek to put sour cream or salsa (or both), or butter & salt & pepper, or beef chili or even vegetarian chili, or gravey of any kind, or some other topping on our baked Russet Burbank potatoes. Left by themselves, ?Russet Burbanks have no flavor; these topping are necessary to give them some sort of palatable flavor. The same might be said of mashed Russet Burbank, though less-decidedly so. It wasn't until 1953 that Simplot actually began selling frozen french fries, though to a very limited degree. It took Ray Kueneman and his assistants nearly two decades more (Dunlap had left Simplot in 1955) to perfect Dunlap’s initial process before mass production of the frozen french fry was possible. It wasn't that Jack Simplot was the only one trying to figure out how to freeze a french fry. Ray Kroc (at McDonald's) opened his own research laboratory in 1957 and hired Ken Strong, and later, Edwin Traisman. While these two refined the process to make a frozen french fry at the bench scale, only much later, in 1967, after the now-famous handshake deal between Jack Simplot and Ray Kroc, did Ray Kueneman (at Simplot) bring everything together so that frozen french fries as we know them today became possible using a derivative of the Traisman-Strong Process now called the Dunlap-Kueneman Process. Few know that that Ray Kueneman arranged the original 'hand-shake' meeting between Jack Simplot and Ray Kroc, thus saving J.R. Simpot from financial ruin. Then with the Russet Burbank being intensively marketed as a high quality baking and mashing potato by the Idaho Potato Commission and with the frozen french fry market growing by leaps and bounds under Ray Kroc and others, Russet Burbank took market share from the Green Mountain and all other extant varieties until it came to dominate the North American marketplace in the mid-late 1960s, a position it still holds. Idaho growers had long been began referring to Russet Burbank under registered trade names Idaho Russet and Idaho Baker as a baking and mashing potato. McDonald's wrote air-tight contracts requiring Russet Burbank potatoes at very high quality standards for its frozen french fries. By standing their ground and holding growers to their standards, McDonald's transformed the processed potato world. It is only in the past few years that new varieties have made any inroads on Russet Burbank's market share. Consequently, the Russet Burbank must be listed among the most successful potato varieties of all time. The commercial success of this variety is based entirely on its having been chosen by J.R. Simplot and Ray Kroc as the variety from which to make frozen french fries. If not for Jack Simplot and Ray Kroc, Russet Burbank would have remained an inconsequential "garden variety" in North America. While through the efforts of the Idaho Potato Commission, Russet Burbank retains wide market recognition as a baking potato and even as a mashing potato, it is really its use as a frozen french fry that keeps it in production. McDonald's and most of its competitors use Russet Burbanks for their frozen french fries--a huge market, dwarfing the baked and mashed (fresh) market. This variety can produce high yields, but it requires careful water management to avoid knobby, ill-shapen tubers and to produce tubers of uniform size. In the absence of strict watering regimens, gardeners and home-growers may find it difficult to obtain the uniformity and quality of commercial growers. One might note that in all of the above there is no mention of taste or flavor of the Russet Burbank when baked or mashed. While one cannot argue against its qualities as a frozen french fry, one might wonder why Russet Burbank continues as a baking or mashing potato. As everyone who is paying attention knows, the Russet Burbank is entirely flavorless as a baked potato. That is why Russet Burbank potatoes, once baked, must be smothered in butter and salt/pepper, gravey, and/or sour cream, and/or salsa, and/or beef/chicken/turkey or even vegetarian chili, or any topping of your selection to give it any sort of flavor. Why anyone would grow this variety in his garden mystifies me. Unless one has a rigorous irrigation/watering system in place, one will get knobby, ill-shapen, odd-sized tubers. And even if by some miracle, you do have irrigation/watering, and/or you get perfect tubers, they will have no flavor to brag about. I will concur with current wisdom that for frozen french fries, Russet Burbank is the industry standard. Otherwise, I do not know why anyone would want to grow them for baking or mashing or anything else. One might want to read a recent two-part commentary in August and September 2013 editions of The Badger Common'Tater, "Why are we still growing Russet Burbanks?" Therein one will discover much insider information asking/wondering why Russet Burbank is still the 400 pound gorilla in the potato marketplace.
 
1 of 1 gardener found this review helpful.  




Vegetable Varieties for Gardeners is a citizen science program, © 2004-2024, All Rights Reserved
Cornell Garden Based Learning, Cornell University College of Agriculture & Life Sciences, Horticulture Section