Salt Potatoes, a Happy Ending to Fireworks Delay

On the July 4th holiday, the weather caused the fireworks to be delayed until Sunday. We had steaks marinated all night in the fridge and cooked on the grill. Fresh corn on the cob. $2.00 for eight, my grandmother would have had a stroke. And these amazing little potatoes. Bigger than fingerling potatoes, but small new potatoes. The corn was great. The steak was kind of chewy. But the potatoes, oh my goodness, they were marvelous. Salt potatoes, they are called, and they will be a staple for our backyard barbecues forever more.

Salt potatoes, it turns out, are a regional specialty in the Central New York area, specifically Syracuse. Back in the day, Syracuse was a big salt producing area. The workers, mostly immigrant Irish, would cook these early small potatoes in the brine, which was on the bubble as they worked. Since then, salt production has died down, but the Salt Potato remains as a testimony to those days. Go to any fair in that area, and you can get a mouth watering dish of them. Dripping with butter. mmmm mmmm

It's ironic that for most of my life, I have walked right past the distinctive white bag with a red sun emblazoned on it with Hinderwadel's Salt Potatoes in the produce section. I remember asking my mother about them when I was a girl, and all I remember from that was that it had something to do with the Irish and it wasn't something that we were buying, so let's move along.

There are recipes on the web for salt potatoes. Some call for red potatoes, but from what I have dug up that is clearly close to blasphemy. The consummate potato for salt potatoes are small, round, new potatoes of the brown type just a bit larger than fingerling potatoes.

Salt potatoes are such serious stuff in upstate New York that last year there was a lawsuit filed by Hinderwadel's because a company was marketing a look-alike copy-cat lower-quality forgery of their salt potatoes. Might even still be in the courts.

Here is how we are making them at my house. First, take 4 or 5 pounds of small new potatoes. Wash them well with a vegetable brush. Put potatoes in a pot, and cover with water. That's about a couple quarts of water. Add a cup or two of salt. Yes, you heard me, a cup or two. Maybe even a whole pound box. This makes a brine that holds almost as much salt as it can. Boil them until fork tender. Drain. Serve with melted butter. Some places on the web say garlic in the butter, which sounds good to me. Or parsley. Probably many flavored butters would be great. But this day, we had just plain butter and oh was that good. Now we have a new staple in our backyard BBQ.