No, I don't mean talking potatoes - I am talking about baby potatoes!
I have lifted 6 rows of fantastic King Edward's today. After boxing them all, I was left with the tiny little marble-sized things that I remember being called "chats" when I was little. Being part Yorkshire, part Scot, there is no way I was going to throw them away - I washed them, boiled them briefly then added lashings of butter, chopped parsley, chives and a bit of basil. Mmm - delicious.
But this set me thinking - does anyone else call these baby potatoes "chats" or is it a regionalism?
chat potatoes
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- oldherbaceous
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Dear Bert, i must admit i have never heard them called chats before, in Milton Bryan we just call them baby potatoes.

Kind Regards, Old Herbaceous.
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sally wright
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Dear Mouse,
in Yorkshire and I suspect a lot of the traditional pig rearing areas they are called pig taties and are fed to same.
Regards Sally Wright
in Yorkshire and I suspect a lot of the traditional pig rearing areas they are called pig taties and are fed to same.
Regards Sally Wright
It's funny you should say that, Sally.
I have been Googling the expression, and this is the only dictionary definition I could find online for "chats":
Small potatoes, such as are given to swine.
What a waste, that's all I can say!!!
I have been Googling the expression, and this is the only dictionary definition I could find online for "chats":
Small potatoes, such as are given to swine.
What a waste, that's all I can say!!!
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- peter
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I was thinking Bangladeshi / Indian cuisine question....
Aloo chat.
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adam-alexander
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In my 1941, 1961 and 1975 editions of RHS The Vegetable Garden Dispayed, there is a photgraph of the potato crop graded into "ware or eating" "seed" and "chats" - Incedentally, one of the gardeners photographed in the '41 edition is pictured, still at work, in the '75 copy.
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The terms chats and ware potatoes is and has always been in my experience the names used to describe the potatoes you sell or those fed to stock.
Barney
Barney
