A potato that tastes like roast chicken sounds like a marketing claim. The people who bred it say the flavor came from a memory, not a focus group, and that when cooked simply, the potato tastes like chicken.
Row 7 Seed Company spent more than a decade developing Poulette. Taste testers describe a savory, nutty flavor that reminds them of roast chicken, with no stock, drippings or seasoning added. The name is French for a young hen. In late September, Poulette went on sale at about 60 Whole Foods Market stores in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut for $6 a bag. The path to those shelves began with a conversation between two people who cared about potatoes for very different reasons.
A favorite potato, remembered over dinner
In 2013, Row 7 co-founder Dan Barber hosted a seed conference at Stone Barns in New York. Two guests ended up seated side by side. Michel Bras, the French chef from Laguiole, is known for gargouillou, a plate of dozens of tiny vegetables, herbs and flowers that kitchens worldwide have copied. Walter De Jong, a potato breeder at Cornell University, whose father had bred potatoes before him.
The two talked about potatoes. Bras described his favorite, an old French variety called Institut de Beauvais. He prized its flavor and how it cooked. He also prized it because his mother grew it.
De Jong tracked the variety down. In early 2014, he crossed it with one of Cornell’s own breeding lines. The first seeds went into the ground in 2015 at the university’s research farm on Mount Pleasant, just outside Ithaca, New York.
Breeding a potato from a memory takes patience, and plant lovers may enjoy a vintage-lens look at carnivorous plants for another take on botanical beauty.
Ten years of selection
Most commercial potato breeding focuses on yield, storage life and the fryer. Barber has said he loves old potatoes and has little patience for modern varieties such as the Russet, which were selected for uniformity and shelf life rather than flavor. His view is that every heirloom was once a new variety that someone chose. Row 7 aims to put chefs at the table when those choices are made.
Barber founded Row 7 in 2018 with Cornell breeder Michael Mazourek and seed grower Matthew Goldfarb. The company’s first success, the Honeynut squash, began when Barber asked Mazourek for a butternut with better taste.
Each fall, De Jong’s team walked the plots and decided which seedlings earned another year. The bar rose every season. A candidate had to look right, carry the correct starch content, resist pests and disease, mature on time and yield well. Only survivors reached the final test, flavor, which the breeders handed to Barber’s kitchen. Barber said the cooks were the ones who recognized that Poulette was special.
Row 7 developed the variety through its Trial Network, a group of more than 150 chefs and farmers who grow, cook and evaluate new varieties while they are still in development. The company says that feedback helped it predict where Poulette would perform well. The seed potatoes were grown organically in New York. The retail potatoes come from organic growers, including Red Hill Farms in Pennsylvania and Norwich Meadows Farm in New York. Barber says the variety also yields well for organic farmers, which matters as much as flavor for a potato that has to make money in the field.
Nobody can yet explain why the potato tastes like chicken. Barber told Food & Wine that he wishes the team knew its source. “The first time we tasted it, everyone at the table said the same thing,” he said. “The name more or less picked itself.”
Row 7 describes the flavor as savory, nutty and deeply roasted, with a creamy but slightly floury texture suited to baking, frying and mashing. Those are the company’s own sensory notes, and no one has yet proved that the potato tastes like chicken. Potato News Today points out that no independent comparative tasting has yet verified them. Buyers may reach different conclusions. Of the first two reviews on Row 7’s website, one praised the earthy flavor in a batch of hasselback potatoes and leek soup. The other reviewer baked and mashed the potatoes and could not detect any chicken.
Whether potato tastes like chicken: what the bag tells the cook
Potato packaging usually shows a mesh sack and a farm name. Row 7’s bag is a deep cobalt blue with a hand-painted wordmark and three words: rich, savory, roasty. A photo of baked potatoes sits beside a mesh window that shows the raw tubers, so shoppers can compare the before and after at a glance.
Barber’s advice for a first meal is simple. Bake or roast the potatoes, which he says is where the claim that potato tastes like chicken holds up best. “Start simple: bake it or roast it,” he said. He also says Poulette makes one of the smoothest purées he has tasted and can replace a Russet in almost any recipe.
Once a bag of Poulette is home, a countertop oven can handle the simple roasting Barber recommends, as covered in Our Place’s Wonder Oven Pro upgrades.
Barber also points to pommes aligot, the cheese and potato purée from the Aubrac region of France, where Bras built his reputation. Aligot needs a potato with the right starch to stretch in long, silky ribbons when beaten with garlic and cheese. Barber says Poulette has that starch. The dish closes a loop: a potato that began with Bras’s mother’s favorite can now return to his home region in a classic preparation.
Where to buy it and what comes next
For now, Poulette is a Northeast product. Bags are sold at about 60 Whole Foods Market stores in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut from September through March. Row 7’s earlier De Jong selection, Upstate Abundance, followed a similar regional path before reaching more stores, and Poulette may take the same route.
Row 7 says it now works with more than 50 plant breeders and chefs across the country. Whether Poulette sells well enough to justify a wider rollout will depend on repeat purchases, which the company has not yet published.
If you find a bag this fall, bake one plainly and salt it well. Then judge for yourself whether the potato tastes like chicken.
Source: mossandfog.com
Frequently asked questions
What is the Poulette potato and why is it called that?
Poulette is a potato developed by Row 7 Seed Company over more than a decade, and taste testers describe its savory, nutty flavor as reminiscent of roast chicken. The name is French for a young hen.
Where and for how much can you buy Poulette potatoes?
Poulette went on sale in late September at about 60 Whole Foods Market stores in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. A bag costs $6.
How was the Poulette potato bred from a chef’s memory?
Michel Bras told Walter De Jong at a 2013 seed conference about his favorite old French potato, Institut de Beauvais, which his mother had grown. De Jong tracked the variety down and crossed it with a Cornell breeding line in early 2014.
How should you cook Poulette potatoes to taste like chicken?
Dan Barber recommends starting simple by baking or roasting the potatoes, which he says is where the chicken-like flavor claim holds up best. He also says Poulette can replace a Russet in almost any recipe.
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