Tlingit, Haida potatoes added to menu at medical center

A partnership between the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium and the Matanuska Experiment Farm and Extension Center in Palmer will result in hundreds of meals featuring traditional Native foods for patients at the Alaska Native Medical Center this year.

In June, 50 hills each of Haida and Tlingit potatoes were planted at the farm, one of two experiment stations in Alaska that operate under the University of Alaska Fairbanks Institute of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Extension. On Oct. 3, Alaska Native Medical Center Executive Chef Amy Foote, two of her sous chefs, culinary students from Palmer High School and farm staff harvested the potatoes, gathering 221 pounds.

Foote said the potatoes and other traditional foods, such as seal soup, moose stew, caribou, salmon, herring roe and fiddlehead ferns, will be served to patients to help them heal while staying at the hospital. 

The potato varieties have been grown in Southeast Alaska for hundreds of years and have made a resurgence in the past decade. They are crazy-looking potatoes, said Jodie Anderson, director of Matanuska Experiment Farm, and have a different texture than the typical russet potatoes found in grocery stores. 

“They’re really knobby,” Anderson said. They’re not “uniform cultivated russets that are a perfect size and shape and you can fit 20 in a box every time. These are really wonky. They grow knobs. They’re obnoxious to clean and peel, to be honest.”

“We’re not going to peel them,” Foote said with a laugh. “We’re eating the peels too.”

Anderson said the potatoes were donated by the Alaska Division of Agriculture’s Northern Latitude Plant Materials Center in Palmer. It houses more than 330 varieties of potatoes. The Matanuska Experiment Farm grew 142 potato varieties this year in test plots to see which grow best. Anderson said they will continue to grow a row of the Tlingit and Haida potatoes for ANTHC.

“We saved some seed today for next year,” Anderson said. “So we'll just keep on keepin’ on all right. We'll help them.”

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