We’ve been having quite the discussion at work as of late. One of my co-workers claims that several fast food restraunts (KFC for sure, and most likely Mcdonalds and Burger King) use turnips, instead of potatoes in their fries. The reason behind this, he claims, is because turnips are cheaper and easier to grow. I am skeptical of his claims, but he is so adamant about them that I have decided to get the straight dope! Thanks everyone in advance.
They use potatoes. (Ex-McD employee.) They cannot use turnips and call them potatoes, because if they did, and someone who had a food allergy to turnips ate one, they could potentially die, and McD’s would get slapped with a lawsuit faster than you can sear your lap with their coffee. Not to mention it’s illegal for them to label them as potatoes, if they’re really turnips. Finally, I don’t know how easy to grow turnips are, but taters have no trouble sprouting in my cubbard.
I found nothing on Snopes or Google about it.
I don’t think they could pass turnips off as potatoes. Although turnip fries are good, they don’t taste like potatoes. I can tell the difference, anyway.
Turnips (brassica rapa) are a member of the brassica family that includes mustard, broccoli, cauliflower and many other strong tasting plants. The glucosinolate and isothiocyanate compounds convey an extremely noticeable bitter flavor that can be detected in almost micromolar concentrations. Food allergies aside, it would be nearly impossible to pass off deep fried turnips for French fried potatoes. The human palate is orders of magnitude more sensitive to the bitter compounds mentioned above than to the relatively sweet starches found in potatoes. Any industrial debittering process applied to turnips in order to improve their flavor would make them economically infeasible as a replacement for inexpensive potatoes. Sensitivity to bitter flavors has been a determining factor in human survival for untold millennia and manifests to this day in a common dislike of vegetables for many children and adults.
PS: Welcome aboard(s), EMT_Mike!
You can make fries ( or as will call them chips ) from parsnips which , I think , are from the same family as turnips. These are quite sweet and crisp up very well .
Parsnips (Umbelliferae = ‘Carrot family’)
Turnips (Cruciferae = ‘Cabbage family’)
But quite apart from all that, turnips are (at least on the small scale I’ve experienced as a gardener) Not easier to grow than potatoes, neither are they higher-yielding.
Thanks for the correction.
Some years back I got carried away with a seed packet of turnips. They did extremely well and I ended up with 6 burlap bags of turnips! I couldn’t give them away.
I stopped a the neighborhood tavern and while they were making jojos, hit on the idea of turnip jojos. They agreed to make them and they were surprisingly good. Good enough that they bought all 6 bags which were soon consumed.
That’s dipped in Tex-Mex batter before frying, here, or a local Coeur d’ Alene delicacy ?