Stamppot
A classic dish from the Netherlands
The Humble Dish of the Netherlands
As winter closes in around us, nothing is better than a warm and nourishing meal, and the Dutch dish Stamppot is just that. Meaning "mash pot," Stamppot is an ideal winter workday meal, preferably eaten on the couch while wrapped in a blanket. The easy simplicity of this comfort food is as reassuring as its taste: whether we’re tired, distracted or clumsily multitasking, it is still nearly impossible to ruin a Stamppot. This is a dish completely lacking in pretension. It requires no expensive ingredients or complicated techniques, but manages to be healthy and delicious anyways, proving that the term “peasant food” should really be a compliment.
Stamppot has been passed down to us from the kitchens of 18th-century Netherlands, where potatoes had finally become a staple food two centuries after they were introduced to Europe from South America. Like many other Europeans, the Dutch were initially wary of potatoes. While European botanists excitedly studied this peculiar plant in greenhouses across the continent, the rest of the population did not readily accept its tubers as food. A member of the plant family Solanaceae, the stems and leaves of the potato plant are bitter and poisonous. If harvested and eaten while still green, the potatoes themselves carry the same toxins. Unsure of this alien plant, many people opted to feed the spuds to their farm animals rather than their families. When potatoes were eventually accepted as fit for human consumption in the early 18th century, however, the spud’s popularity soon soared, as more Dutch people began growing, eating, and ultimately, breeding, the plant. The country’s love affair with potatoes is still going strong: the Netherlands dedicates 16 percent of its arable land to growing them.
Stamppot’s other main ingredients, carrots and kale, already had a long history of cultivation in the Netherlands. As the legend goes, Dutch farmers honored their monarchs, of the House of Orange, by breeding carrots into the orange varieties which remain the norm today. In these times the working classes mostly relied on hearty vegetables and breads to fill them up, since for them meat was a rare luxury. Working over open hearths, Dutch cooks created Stamppot by boiling potatoes, carrots, and kale, mashing them together as they softened. Adding cream, butter, salt and pepper perfected this humble dish, which remains a popular winter meal in the Netherlands, and Dutch diaspora communities around the world.
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