Two questions: are red spots on potatoes OK? White skin but purple insides; what kind are these?

by Bob
(Toronto)

We bought some white potatoes at the store the other day. I noticed that some of the potatoes in the bin had red spots on them, I think where there were eyes starting to sprout. I picked some without the red spots. When we went to cook them a few days later, what we found was that the potatoes were purple inside, a lot like the purple potatoes shown in your section on purple potatoes. What I seem to find when I google purple potatoes is like what you have -- purple skins and purple insides. These were, as I said, white skins with purple insides.

I have two questions:

1) Do the red spots i saw mean anything? Was I right to reject those potatoes, or would it not have mattered?

2) While I assume what I have is just a variety you did not illustrate, is that a correct assumption, or are my potatoes bad?

Answer:

Hello Bob,

Some deciding factors when choosing potatoes is that they don't have greens spots or that look shrunk. If they were starting to sprout on the red spots then you made a good choice on selecting others. What you described as white skin and purple insides seem to be the Okinawan sweet potatoes.

However, if you didn't confuse them with sweet potatoes, that means that probably what you got is another variety of purple potatoes that I haven't seen yet.