Digging for Treasure: Fingerling Potatoes

Freshly dug fingerlings.

Right now in the field, we’re on our knees with a garden fork, digging potatoes by hand. It’s slow work — you feel around in the loosened soil for the ones the fork missed, and every handful feels a little like buried treasure. This week it’s fingerlings: French and Banana, plus a bigger variety called Huckleberry.

A “new” potato isn’t a variety.

It’s any potato dug young, before the skin has had time to toughen and cure. Rub it with your thumb and the skin comes right off. The flesh is sweeter than a stored potato will ever be again, and it won’t keep, which is why you rarely see them at a regular grocery store. Once the skin sets, that window closes.

Fingerling is a different thing — a shape, long and knobby, not a stage of growth.

The flesh is waxy and dense, so it holds together through roasting or a hard sear in a skillet. Halve them lengthwise, get a hot pan with oil and salt, and let the skins go crisp.

Ours right now are new potatoes that happen to be fingerlings too — dug young, thin-skinned, still holding their shape in the pan.