15 Uses of Potatoes Besides Eating Them
Potatoes are a hardy staple of numerous
dishes across a whole range of cultures. You can eat them mashed,
roasted, fried, baked, sautéed, or as part of a salad or soup and they
are the fourth most consumed crop in the world, after rice, wheat, and
corn. But as it turns out, potatoes have many other uses outside of your
cooking pot. Some of them are remarkably useful, others are great fun
to try, but all of them are bound to surprise you! Here are some ways
you can use our potatoes outside of the dinner table.
1. Remove Stains
Foods like turmeric, berries, and beets are fabulous additions to any
meal, but they have a habit of leaving their traces all over your hands.
It can take a lot of scrubbing with normal soap to remove these stains,
and it's really hard to reach underneath your nails. Don't fear though,
just keep half a potato back when preparing the dish and rub it over
the affected area to magically remove the blemish! Make sure you get
right under your nails too. This will work well on grass and ink stains
as well.
2. Make a Hot or Cold Compress
This is one you might have read about in books, and it's been used for
centuries. Potatoes retain their temperature for a surprisingly long
time so if you are out and about on a cold night, keep a couple of hot
potato slices in your gloves or pockets. Similarly, if you need to keep
cool, use a frozen or chilled potato. If you want to ease aches and
pains, then make a hot or cold compress using potato slices inside a
sock.
3. Clean Your Windows
Potatoes make for a terrific non-toxic
glass cleaner. Take a raw, uncooked potato and rub it over your windows,
car windscreen, or even eyeglasses, before wiping away the juice with a
clean cloth. You will be left with gleaming glass, without damaging
your hands or leaving the smell of chemicals up your nostrils. This
works well on clear plastic like swimming or ski goggles as well.
4. Use Potato Juice for Your Ailments
Okay, so potato juice might not sound like the yummiest mixture in the
world, but it has been used for centuries to fight various ailments. It
is considered effective against ulcers, sprains, gout, sciatica,
heartburn and bruising. The juice is rich in vitamins and it's dead easy
to make. Just put a couple of potatoes in a blender, zap them for
thirty seconds and you're done. Add carrot or cinnamon juice to improve
the taste and you have your own homemade medicine.
5. Remove Warts
Warts are a rather unsightly annoyance, and if you get one, you will
want to get rid of it. There's no need to go and have it lazered off
though, just treat it with a raw potato. Carefully rub the cut end of
the potato across the wart, and leave the juice on. Repeat the process
every day until the wart is banished for good!
6. Remove a Broken Light Bulb from a Socket
This use of potatoes is trumpeted by numerous sources! At some point in
your life, you've probably faced the annoyance of a light bulb breaking
as you attempt to unscrew it. You might be wondering why companies can't
design bulbs that don't do this, but in the meantime, you have a trusty
potato to help you deal with the problem. Cut the potato in half, and
gently press the flat side on to the remainder of the bulb. When the
bulb is firmly inserted, you can simply screw it out.
7. Shine Your Silverware 
If your cutlery is cloudy and your trinkets are tarnished, why not use a
potato to restore their sparkle? You can rub a raw potato over the
items if you like, but I find it best to soak them in potato water. This
also means you don't have to use extra potatoes to perform the task,
simply use the water from the batch you have boiled for your dinner. Add
any peeled skins into the water for great results.
8. Feed Your Geraniums
The nutrients in potatoes will help your pot plants grown. You can
either carve a small hole in the potato and plant the stem of the flower
inside it, before putting the whole thing into the soil; or you can
sprinkle some potato shavings into the soil around your already growing
flowers to give them a fantastic, natural boost.
9. Sort Out Your Skin
Potatoes are great for your skin, so making yourself a potato face mask
once a week can reap rewards. You only need to use mashed potato mixed
with water and leave the resulting paste on your face for 30 minutes. A
couple of slices of potato can also be used to reduce the appearance of
puffy eyes and black circles, and are a great alternative to the more
widely used cucumber. The ability of potatoes to clear up minor rashes
and acne have been known for centuries!
10. Soothe a Headache
Potatoes have been used to help ease headaches for centuries, and you
will only need a few slices. You can rub them into your temples, or for
more sustained relief, fix them against your forehead using a headband
or bandage.
11. Make Some Great Personalized Art
We all remember making potato stamps and dipping them in paint in art
class at school. But don't for a second think that this practice is just
the preserve of children. Just draw the shape you want on to the cut
potato, carve out the shape and dip it in fabric paint before dabbing it
over your canvas. Personalize bags, cushions, walls - whatever you
like! It's a really fun and easy way to personalize your home and it's
great for kids too.
12. Relieve a Burn
If you burnt your fingers on a hot pan or clipped your arm against the
stove while it was still on, reach for a potato. Just 1 slice of raw
potato should do the trick - apply it to the burn and fix in place using
whatever you have handy.
13. Absorbs Excess Salt from a Soup or Cooking Pot
If you have over-salted your pot of soup or pasta by mistake, then throw
in some potato slices or cubes to restore the balance. Leave the
potatoes in while the mixture simmers for ten minutes or so, and then
scoop them back out.
14. Banish Rust from Metal
Are your old tools or kitchen utensils starting to look like antiques?
Restore them to their former glories by chopping a potato in half,
adding a liberal amount of soap or salt to the cut end and rubbing it
over the affected surface. Rinse and dry the object thoroughly
afterward. This works great along the edge of large carving knives!
15. Power a Light Bulb
Okay, so we expect this one is more for fun than anything else, but it's
still fascinating and great for entertaining the kids/grandkids. Did
you know that potatoes contain lots of energy, and the chemical
reactions that take place between the potato juices and a couple of
dissimilar metals create enough voltage to power a small electrical
device?
To try this for yourself, you will need: 1 large potato, two small
coins, two zinc-plated standard nails, three small pieces of copper wire
and a small, low wattage light bulb:
1. Cut the potato in half, cut a slit in each half. Wrap the coins in
the copper wire a few times, using different wire for each coin. Then
slide the coins into the slits.
2. Take the remaining piece of copper wire and wrap it around one of the
zinc plated nails. Stick the nail into one of the potato halves.
3. Take the wire that's connected to the coin in the half of the potato
that also contains the nail, and wrap it around the second nail. Stick
the second nail into the other potato half.
4. Connect the two loose ends of the copper wire to the light bulb and
it will light up.
Be careful when allowing children to handle the copper wires as they
contain a small electrical charge, and don't perform the experiment near
to an open flame.