Idaho Potato Museum — What’s the a-PEEL?

Where:  Blackfoot Idaho
When:  Thursday, June 10, 2021
Bucket List:  Idaho Potato Museum

On our way from Salt Lake City to the Tetons, we stopped at the Idaho Potato Museum in Blackfoot Idaho located on Highway 91 and just off Interstate 15.  The cost is just $6/person, and was worth every cent.  There’s plenty of room for motorhomes in the parking lot, and the place was quite busy for a weekday morning.

First, because of my biology background and prior work with plant breeders (soybeans) during my time at the University of Missouri, I love the science behind food sources.   Potatoes are tuber-propagated, which means that plant grown from the tubers are clones (genetically identical) to those of their parent potatoes.  To make new varieties, breeders must pollinate the flowers to produce berries which contain true seeds (TPS) made through sexual reproduction. 

Potatoes themselves are processed and integrated into all sorts of different foods.   Who doesn’t love mashed potatoes?  Baked potatoes?  Potato chips?   Seriously, Forest Gump should have talked about potatoes instead of shrimp.  And, I have a personal connection to potatoes.   During an internship for Frito Lay in the summer of 1993, I researched some starch properties of what would become the Baked Lays potato chip. 

The history of the potato itself is equally interesting, and the museum does a great job reviewing the potato’s importance to the world and to Idaho.  Visitors can learn about important people in the industry, potato processing, irrigation and land development, and technical/equipment improvements that have made potatoes what they are today.  There are all sorts of “fast facts” scattered throughout the museum that help make the place quite entertaining.

One memorable part of the museum is the Couch Potato exhibit.  There, a family of potatoes sit on a sofa and sing a song by Cheryl Wheeler, which starts out: 

Idaho Potato Museum

They're red, they're white, they're brown
They get that way underground
There can't be much to do
So now they have blue ones too.
We don't care what they look like, we'll eat them
Any way they can fit on our plate
Any way we can conjure to heat them
We're delighted to think they're just great.

Perhaps the best part about the museum is the FOOD.   They have potato soup, potato bread, and potato ice cream!   I didn’t plan on this place being a “bucket list” stop but it was.