The Potato Review
Potatoes are pretty cool. You can essentially do anything with them and they could still taste good. But which potato-type product is the best kind? I try to answer that question here, using set criteria and tests that can be recreated if someone doesn’t trust my results. And if you do try to recreate my tests, please let me know and maybe we can exchange notes.
Let’s get started
Raw Potato
This one seems easiest to start with. You can just take any potato to test with. My results are as follows:
Size: This really depends on the potato you grab. I grabbed a fairly large one, and I believe that the raw potato could be one of the largest types of potatoes we’re testing, so I believe that this wins in size so far.
Color: This potato is close to a gold-brown. There’s definitely dark spots near where the eyes of the potato used to be. Overall, I think that this is a nice color.
Taste: It tasted like dirt. That’s the best description I can come up with. It’s a raw potato, and I suggest not to eat it because it really didn’t taste good.
Price: I could not find a single potato for sale at my local grocer. All that they had was a 5 lb. bag of potatoes, and they cost $1.25. I don’t think that’s a bad deal, so I feel like I got my money’s worth. Plus, I have a lot more raw potatoes!
Effectiveness of washing my car: This went okay, but not great. The raw potato felt a lot like a really dry sponge, and it felt more like a wet potato when I dipped it in a bucket of soapy water. I feel like I washed the potato more than I washed my car. Also my car has the smell of potatoes on it now. I suggest using the raw potato only if it’s the last option.
OVERALL SCORE: 5/10. There’s a lot of potential with this type of potato, but that’s all there is. You need to do something to it before it is able to be used.
Baked Potato
This is a beautiful potato. You basically put it in the oven and bake it. Adding everything else to it is an option, but you don’t have to if you don’t want to.
Size: It’s basically the same size as a raw potato, but if you add any toppings to it, you might make it taller. Not much change beyond that.
Color: This can be many different colors, depending on what you decide to put on it. I personally added cheese, sour cream, and bacon bits, so that added two more colors with it. All of the colors on my baked potato are brown, white, yellow, and red. There was also silver for a small time when it was being baked.
Taste: This was a good tasting potato. The skin of the potato was salted just right, and the toppings I added also enhanced the flavor. Remember to remove the tinfoil before eating it, though. You might cut your lip.
Price: I couldn’t find any baked potatoes for sale that weren’t in the freezer section, so I just used some potatoes I brought in a bag of raw ones. The extra toppings cost me a bit more, so the total price was about $8.18. I did not include the price of the potato, because I used the bag that I previously purchased.
Effectiveness of washing my car: This could possibly be the worst way to wash my car. Sure, I got the soapy water on it, but now my car is all covered with cheese, bacon bits, and sour cream. Essentially I made my car dirtier than it was before. Plus everything now smells like potatoes.
OVERALL SCORE: 8/10. This is delicious. One of my favorite types of potatoes, and you can add just about anything on it. I didn’t give this a perfect score because it wasn’t a good way to clean my car. It was almost perfect, though.
Hash browns
This one is delicious. It’s just potatoes and salt! I really enjoy eating this for breakfast with a nice side of eggs, so it makes sense to add hash browns to the list.
Size: It depends on the serving, but if you’re like me you like to fill up the plate with it. It’s a flat type of potato, so the size of it can be very small ,or very large depending on your preference.
Color: Golden brown. White.
Taste: It’s a cooked potato. Not exactly like the baked potato, because this one is crunchy. I added salt to it, and some people like ketchup, but that’s not for me.
Price: I actually don’t know the price of a frozen bag of hash browns. However, I do know that you can go to McDonald’s and get a hash brown for $1.00. It’s not exactly the same as the original thing, but the McDonald’s one is pretty good. You could potentially use $10 and buy ten of them. That’s not bad.
Effectiveness of washing my car: Surprisingly, this was one of the more useful types of potatoes. Its consistency made it almost like a nice sponge, and it was able to absorb water really well to clean. Obviously I don’t have to mention the potato smell anymore. I’m starting to like it.
OVERALL SCORE: 7.9/10. It’s almost on the same level of the baked potato. I can eat this stuff all the time, but you can’t really have a full meal with hash browns. It was a good car cleaner.
Mr. Potato Head
This one is a classic. Everybody knows about Mr. Potato Head, and he even starred in a few movies. This is a valid potato product, so of course I’m going to rate it.
Size: This is probably the largest potato on the list. There are so many additions that people can add to it, which just makes it even bigger.
Color: Multiple. Again, there are a lot of extra pieces you can add on to it, so the color can change. The classic Mr. Potato Head’s colors are brown, dark brown, black, white, blue, red, and pink.
Taste: Plastic. I wouldn’t recommend it. I couldn’t fit the potato part in my mouth, and the front of the packaging it came in said that the smaller pieces are a choking hazard, so I didn’t try it.
Price: Varies. Again, there are multiple pieces to it that you could buy to customize your potato. You could only buy the original, but you could spend a lot more money and buy more.
Effectiveness of washing my car: Results inconclusive. He clearly has hands, and I’ve seen Toy Story 3 at least twice, so it’s obvious that he is able to clean it. I left the hose running, filled a bucket with soap water and waited, but nothing happened. He just stood there and let the hose cover the driveway with water. Maybe he only moves when no one is looking…
OVERALL SCORE: 2/10. You can’t eat him, he can be really expensive, and he doesn’t seem to wash my car. I’m going to leave him out overnight and hope that he does it, but I don’t really think anything will be done. I don’t recommend this potato.
French Fries
Fries, or “chips” as some people call them, are a fantastic type of potato. There is so many types of fries in the world, and I think that’s amazing.
Size: Small. Fries really aren’t that big, but there is a lot of them. At most fast food restaurants you can buy fries at three different sizes: small, medium, or large.
Color: Usually golden brown, but it really depends on the seasoning. Some people add a lot of spices to the fries which change the color a lot.
Taste: Really good. I like dipping them in ketchup and that even enhances the flavor of the potato. Any seasoning added is great too.
Price: Most fries at fast food restaurants are under $2. This is pretty good, even after the fact that you get a lot of fries for this price. The really elaborate fries at restaurants that aren’t fast food could be up to $5. That’s not great, because the classic fry is already cheap and tastes good.
Effectiveness of washing my car: Not good. I can wash it, but it takes too much time to clean any part of it. I dip the fry in the soap water and start cleaning it, but the end of my fry is incredibly small, and it easily broke after a few seconds of using it. I ran out of fries because I was eating them while trying to clean my car.
OVERALL SCORE: 6.5/10. Fries taste really good, but they aren’t great at cleaning. For most places that sell them, they are overpriced and they don’t supply a lot of fries. I enjoy the cheapness of fast food fries, but the taste gets a bit dull sometimes.
Potato Chips
Potato Chips or “fries” as some people call them, seem to have the largest variety of flavors. I personally tried the classic flavor, but you’re more than welcome to try the other flavors.
Size: The bag that the chips come in are all the same size, but they aren’t potatoes so we are not counting that. Some chips that I grabbed out of the bag were the size of my palm, and some were smaller.
Color: The bags are super bright and colorful. The chips aren’t.
Taste: There is a reason that they call the classic flavor “classic”. I don’t know what that reason is, but there definitely is one. I feel like the other possible flavors would make it a better experience, but while buying the original flavor I saw many different flavors that make no sense.
Price: A party size bag averages at about $3.98. The bags are usually half full of chips, so the bags have half air.
Effectiveness of washing my car: I tried this, and it just didn’t work. I opened the bag and dumped it in the soapy water. It just floated in there. Throwing the chips at the car had no effect, and it just broke the chips. I filled the bag it came in with water, and this sort of worked. I can pour the water on the car, but that’s about it. I don’t recommend using this to clean.
OVERALL SCORE: 4/10. I feel like all the different type of flavors could be a great experience, but most of it could be overwhelming. I don’t want to try a chicken and waffles flavored chip. The new flavors just don’t make any sense.
Tater Tots
In my opinion, tater tots are almost equal to fries. They are the same size, color, and almost the same taste. They actually taste more like hash browns. However, I didn’t want to just throw my opinion out there; I needed to rate it.
Size: They are the smallest types of potatoes. Round, tube shaped. Easy to have a bunch of them.
Color: Golden brown.
Taste: They taste a lot like hash browns. This is a good thing.
Price: A 5 lb. bag of tots is about $5.98.
Effectiveness of washing my car: I first tried the french fry route. I dipped it in the water and scrubbed it on the car. This didn’t work so I tried the chip route by throwing them on the car. This worked better, but was still not very effective.
OVERALL SCORE: 9/10. They really are basically just fries that taste like hash browns. Washing my car with them didn’t work, but they still taste good. The only problem that I had was: while tasting like hash browns, they were not able to wash my car like them. I think that because of the size, the price, and the taste is is why tater tots are the best.
Kristopher K. Online 