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How Much Does A Potato Weigh? A Guide To Potato Weights And Sizes

Maria Foster
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by Maria Foster

Potatoes are among the most common staple foods in pantries across the U.S.

They are super versatile in terms of the different ways that they can be prepared and surprisingly nutritious.

On top of that, they are incredibly affordable and accessible, which makes them even more popular.

In recipes that include potatoes in any form, the potatoes are often referred to by size.

How Much Does A Potato Weigh? The Ultimate Guide

A recipe that calls for two medium potatoes is all well and good until you over or underestimate the size of a potato and end up with too much or too little.

In this guide, I will look at how much potatoes weigh and how you can accurately choose potatoes based on size and weight for your recipes.

Short answer: How much does a potato weigh? Well, it depends on the size, but medium potatoes can weigh 5 to 10 ounces.

Potato Size Guide

As I mentioned, there are many different types of potatoes that all come in different shapes and sizes.

Thankfully, types of potatoes can be grouped together to help us better estimate their weight.

Below is an approximate size guide for different common types of potatoes.

White, Yellow, Russet, Or Red Potatoes

White, yellow, russet, and red potatoes are some of the most commonly used potatoes in classic home cooking recipes.

They are also very similar in density and structure; therefore, they have similar weights depending on their size.

  • Small: For these types of potatoes, small is categorized as having a diameter of between 1.75 and 2.25 inches. You should be able to hold a couple of these potatoes in your palm at once.

    Each of these potatoes will weigh less than 0.31 pounds. Using easier measurements, these potatoes will weigh less than 5 ounces or less than 140 grams.
  • Medium: These common potatoes are considered medium-sized when they are between 2.25 and 3.25 inches in diameter. You should be able to comfortably hold one of these potatoes in the palm of your hand.

    These potatoes can weigh between 0.31 and 0.61 pounds, which translates to a weight range of 5 to 10 ounces or 140 to 280 grams.
  • Large: A large potato from these varieties generally measures between 3.25 and 4.25 inches in diameter. These potatoes should be too big to comfortably hold in your hand.

    Instead, you must engage your fingers to keep it in place. Potatoes of this size generally weigh more than 0.61 pounds.

    This translates to 10 ounces or more and more than 280 grams. There is no upper limit on the weight of large potatoes. However, 540 grams is generally considered to be one of the largest sizes.

Sweet Potatoes

Working out the size and subsequent weight of sweet potatoes requires a slightly different approach.

Because of the unusual shape of these potatoes and the differences in the density, using diameter alone isn’t enough.

Below is a size guide to help determine the size of sweet potatoes.

  • Small: Measuring sweet potatoes requires using the length and diameter. For small sweet potatoes, they should be 4 inches long and 1.75 inches in diameter.

    This should fit comfortably in your hand. Small sweet potatoes should weigh around 0.13 pounds. This translates to about 2.1 ounces or 60 grams.
  • Medium: Medium sweet potatoes are slightly longer and rounder. They should have a length of around 5 inches and a diameter of around 2 inches.

    These potatoes should weigh roughly 0.25 pounds, which is also 4 ounces or 114 grams. This means that medium-sized sweet potatoes are almost double the weight of small ones.
  • Large: These sweet potatoes are some of the largest that you will find in a grocery store. To be considered large, a sweet potato must measure 5.75 inches or longer and 2.5 inches in diameter.

    This size translates to around 0.39 pounds, at least 6.3 ounces, or 180 grams.

Estimating the weight of a sweet potato is slightly more difficult than with a white, yellow, or russet potato.

This is because there is such a vast range of shapes that the potatoes grow in. Some have a large diameter all the way along, while others have long, spindle-shaped areas that can affect the accuracy of this weighing system.

That said, this size guide can be a great way to roughly estimate the weight of potatoes before you buy them or use them in a recipe when scales aren’t available.

How Much Does A Medium Potato Weigh?

Medium potatoes can weigh between 5 and 10 ounces or 140 to 280 grams. This includes the skin, not after it has been peeled.

The specific weight of the potato will vary depending on its exact size and the conditions in which it was grown.

Remember that the soil’s moisture content affects the potato’s density.

The variety of the potato can also affect its weight. Certain varieties of potatoes are much denser and have higher water content than others.

For example, ratte potatoes, an heirloom variety, are among the densest varieties of potatoes. On the other hand, russet potatoes are among the lightest and driest varieties.

You could have one of each of these types of potatoes that is the same size, but they would have vastly different weights due to the differences in their genetics and water content.

These differences make it difficult to weigh potatoes accurately without a scale.

White, Yellow, Russet, Or Red Potatoes

What Is Classified As A Medium Potato?

Now that we know the general weight range of a medium potato, you might wonder how you classify it.

The quickest and easiest way to find out if the potato in your kitchen or the grocery store is truly a medium potato is to do the hand test.

If a potato meets the size requirements to be generally classified as a medium potato, it should fit comfortably in the palm of your hand.

This means that you should be able to hold the individual potato in the palm of your hand without properly gripping it with your fingers to keep it in place.

How a medium potato sits in your hand will change slightly depending on whether you have larger or smaller hands than average. However, you can make reasonable adjustments in your assessment based on the size of your hand.

If you have to stretch or tense your fingers in order to grip the potato and keep it in your hand, it is more likely to be classified as a large potato.

Alternatively, if you can easily fit the potato in the palm of your hand with room to spare, it is more likely to be considered a small potato.

How Much Do Potatoes Weigh By Average Size?

I’ve already covered the range of sizes that potatoes need to be to fit into the categories of small, medium, and large.

However, if you are into numbers a bit more, you will know that there is an average weight for each size category of potato.

  • Large: Large potatoes will have the highest average weight of all three classifications. On average, a large potato weighs around 283.5 grams or 10 ounces.
  • Medium: As a slightly smaller-sized potato, you would be right to assume that medium potatoes will have a lighter average weight than large potatoes. On average, medium potatoes weigh around 163 grams or 5.75 ounces.
  • Small: Small potatoes naturally have a lower average weight than medium and large potatoes. On average, small potatoes weigh around 96.4 grams or 3.4 ounces.

It is important to note that not all potatoes that fit into the three size categories will have the average weight. Large potatoes can be significantly larger and weigh significantly more than this.

You are unlikely to get small potatoes that are much smaller than the average weight because quality control during the farming process often removes small potatoes, especially.

How Much Does An Average Sweet Potato Weigh?

As I said earlier, sweet potatoes have a different structure and shape than other potatoes.

Because of this, they also have different average weights for each of the size categories.

  • Large: On average, a sweet potato that is at least 5.75 inches long is considered to be large. Sweet potatoes of this size weigh an average of 177 grams.
  • Medium: A medium sweet potato generally measures around 5 inches long. It cannot be longer than 5.5 inches or shorter than 4.75 inches for this classification. On average, sweet potatoes of this size weigh around 113 grams.
  • Small: Finally, a small sweet potato measures no more than 4.25 inches long with an average length of 4 inches. A sweet potato of this size has an average weight of around 59 grams.

Why Is Weighing Potatoes Important?

One of the most common reasons for wanting to know the rough weight of a potato is to adhere to a recipe.

Because potatoes are natural, they come in a huge variety of shapes and sizes, even if they are the same type of potato grown in the same field.

This means that recipes can’t simply state that you need 3 potatoes. This doesn’t give you enough information about the volume of potatoes used to create the dish.

Instead, recipes often call for 2 medium potatoes. They might even go as far as to give you information about the type of potatoes to give you a more accurate description.

Weighing potatoes and understanding the definitions of various potato sizes can also be useful for people looking to lose weight.

When cooking meals from scratch, it can be difficult to estimate the number of calories and other nutrients in ingredients such as potatoes if you don’t know their size.

The number of calories in a large potato will significantly differ from those in a small or medium-sized potato.

Therefore, knowing all you can about potatoes’ weight and size can be incredibly helpful in improving your cooking.

Things To Know When Weighing Potatoes

There are a few important things that you need to know when it comes to estimating the weight of potatoes.

I’ve mentioned that there are huge variations in the size and shape of potatoes. When you are buying potatoes from a grocery store, there can be even more variation that isn’t visible to the eye. 

The conditions that potatoes have grown in significantly impact the size, shape, and density of the potatoes.

When you purchase potatoes from a grocery store, especially if they are loose potatoes, they can be from different batches and different farms. This means that two medium-sized potatoes may have significantly different weights. 

Potatoes grown in dry climates are likely to have a different weight than an almost identical potato grown in a well-irrigated climate.

The potatoes grown in dry climates are likely to weigh less than those grown in wetter climates. 

This is because there will have been less water to absorb during the growing process. Therefore, the potatoes will be less dense than those with access to plenty of water.

It is also important to recognize that different varieties of potatoes are likely to have different weights.

This weight difference will mostly be due to differences in size between varieties and differences in the genetics of the different potatoes.

How To Weigh Potatoes

How To Weigh Potatoes

If you are looking for a specific potato weight, there are a few different ways to go about this.

The weighing process that you use will depend on the accuracy that you need and the number of potatoes that you are weighing.

If you want to know the weight of a single potato or portion of potatoes to track calories or nutrients, you can weigh the potatoes at home.

This can be done with a basic set of kitchen scales. If the batteries are in good health, digital scales are likely to be more accurate than balance or mechanical scales.

If the grocery store has weighing scales, it may also be possible to weigh individual potatoes. This can be a good option if you are only looking for a couple of potatoes for a specific recipe, so you don’t have to buy an entire bag of potatoes.

If you buy a larger quantity of potatoes, weighing them on a scale isn’t the most convenient method.

Instead, you can buy potatoes in bags or pre-weighed sacks and sold in specific quantities. Potatoes sold by the bag or sack tend to weigh between 2 lbs and 22 lbs.

You will most likely find these quantities at farmer’s markets and farm shops rather than grocery stores.

Educate Your Eye

In reality, you aren’t always going to have access to scales to weigh potatoes or to pre-weighed sacks. Therefore, it can be a good idea to train your eye to more accurately estimate the weight of potatoes judging by their size.

The easiest way to train your eye to estimate the weight of potatoes accurately is to start with a set number of potatoes and their average weight. As a general rule, 1 pound of potatoes is made up of two medium-sized potatoes.

However, to begin training your eye, you must know how to identify a medium potato rather than a large one.

Use the hand method I mentioned above to measure a medium potato.

Once you know that a medium-sized potato can fit in the palm of your hand and that two of those potatoes weigh roughly 1 pound, you can estimate other weights based on this information.

How Many Medium Potatoes Are in a Single Portion?

Most recipes that call for potatoes will refer to medium-sized potatoes. This is because it is a nice middle range to go for.

In general, using large potatoes in home cooking will increase the amount of chopping required before cooking, and using small potatoes can result in a much larger number required, depending on the recipe.

Many recipes give quantities based on a certain number of people. Most commonly, the number is 4 to 6 people.

If you prepare food for more guests than that or fewer family members, you might find it useful to know how many medium potatoes make a standard, single portion. This can help you convert the quantities to suit your needs.

As a general rule, one medium potato per person should be enough. This presumes that the potato is used as a side dish to accompany a more substantial main dish.

How the potatoes are prepared doesn’t greatly affect the number of potatoes needed.

If you are making mashed or whipped potatoes, you might want to add another couple of potatoes to help you get the right consistency. Leftover mashed potatoes can also be useful for other dishes.

If the potatoes are serving as the meal’s main event, for example, with loaded baked potatoes, you might want to increase the portion size.

For some people, a single, medium-baked potato with plenty of toppings will be enough. However, other people might want to have two potatoes for their meal.

In this case, depending on your guests, you can increase the number of potatoes you prepare by 50% to 75%.

Again, having leftover baked potatoes can easily be turned into a delicious lunch or snack of stuffed potato skins. Therefore, it doesn’t matter too much if you make one or two too many.

Weight Of Potatoes By Cups

Weight Of Potatoes By Cups

Sometimes, the people who write recipes like to throw their audience curve balls.

This means that while you might be used to seeing recipes refer to potato quantities in terms of 2 medium potatoes, you might suddenly come across a recipe that calls for 2 cups of potatoes.

This is much more difficult to work out, and the weight can be very different from the weight of two potatoes, even small ones.

In 1 cup, you can fit approximately 225 grams of potato, which translates to around 8 ounces. This amount of potato can be taken from a single medium-sized potato.

It is important to note that the amount of potato that can fill a cup measurement will change depending on how it has been cut or sliced.

If the recipe you are using calls for 2 cups of potato, this can be around 450 grams or 15 ounces of potato. Three medium potatoes or one large and one medium potato can achieve this.

The amount of potato required for a recipe significantly increases with each increase in the number of cups.

Knowing that one medium potato is enough to fill a single cup measure, you can simply convert the number of cups to medium potatoes instead.

How Many Potatoes In A 10 Lb Bag?

If you live near a farmer’s market or a farm shop, you are likely to purchase your potatoes in larger quantities than you would at a grocery store. Many farmer’s markets sell potatoes in 10-pound sacks.

This can be an incredibly convenient way to purchase potatoes, especially if you use them in lots of your meals and don’t live close to a grocery store.

However, if you are trying to plan your meals, you might need to know how many potatoes, on average are in the sack.

Ultimately, the number of potatoes you can get in a 10-pound sack depends on the type of potato you are buying. A larger amount of smaller and lighter potatoes will fit into the 10-pound sack than bigger and heavier varieties.

If you purchase Russet or Idaho potatoes, you are likely to get 16 to 20 potatoes in a single sack, the lowest number of potatoes.

If you are getting standard Yellow or White potatoes, a 10-pound sack will contain between 18 and 22 potatoes. You can expect to have between 25 and 30 potatoes per sack for Red or Yukon Gold potatoes.

From this point, the types of potatoes decrease significantly in size. This means you get many more potatoes in a 10-pound sack than with the abovementioned varieties.

If you purchase Fingerling potatoes, you can expect to get between 60 and 70 potatoes in a sack. You can get between 80 and 100 potatoes per 10-pound bag for petite or baby potatoes.

Purchasing potatoes in these kinds of quantities can often be the most cost-effective way of feeding your family.

Number Of Potatoes By Weight

If you have decided that purchasing a 10-pound sack of potatoes is going to be too much for your family, there are other options.

If you do most of your grocery shopping at a farmer’s market, the potatoes are often loose rather than prepackaged.

When this is the case, they are often priced by weight. Below are some average numbers of potatoes by weight to make your trip to the farmer’s market much easier and stress-free.

5 Lbs

Because 5 pounds is quite a significant amount of potatoes, many markets will run offers for purchasing this weight.

This can result in a significant discount on the price of the potatoes. However, to avoid the potatoes going to waste, you will want to know how many potatoes that gets you.

Using medium-sized potatoes as a benchmark, 5 pounds equals about 5 potatoes. This is enough to feed 5 adults a single meal.

500 Grams

It can be common to find pre-packaged potatoes at the grocery store that weigh around 500 grams. Sometimes, these bags are not clear so you can’t see how many potatoes are inside.

This can be unhelpful when planning meals. As a general rule, 500 grams of potatoes is equal to around 2 medium potatoes.

150 Grams

If you are preparing a recipe that only calls for a small amount of potatoes to create a topping or as a bulking agent, you might have to purchase around 150 grams of potatoes.

This can be difficult to judge just by looking at the potatoes, and having half a potato left over is inconvenient unless you have a compost bin.

150 grams equals about 1 small potato. If your small potato is slightly over 150 grams, you can probably lose the extra weight by peeling the potato.

Grocery Store Potato Sizing System

Grocery Store Potato Sizing System

In this guide, I have discussed how to purchase potatoes from a farmer’s market or a farm shop in sacks or loose by the pound.

However, many people purchase their potatoes in a regular grocery store, which can create additional potato sizing issues.

When you head to the potato aisle of your grocery store, you might see labels on the potatoes or on the crates that have letters on them.

If you have looked more closely at the potatoes, you might have noticed that the letters tend to correspond with their size.

Most grocery stores and farmers use the same sizing system. This helps ensure that customers get potatoes that are as uniform in size as possible.

  • Size A Potatoes: If you see the letter “A” on a crate of potatoes at the grocery store, the crate will be filled with potatoes that meet the size requirements of this category. The potatoes in this crate will be roughly 2.5 inches in diameter.
  • Size B Potatoes: If you see a crate of potatoes with the letter “B” on it, it refers to potatoes that meet a medium size category. The potatoes in this crate are typically between 1.5 and 2.25 inches in diameter.
  • Size C Potatoes: The final category of potatoes is size C. This applies to any potatoes in a crate marked with the letter “C. “

    All potatoes in this crate will be less than 1.5 inches in diameter. This is the smallest category of potatoes that grocery stores sell.

Final Thoughts

Asking how much potatoes weigh is much more complicated than you might think. There are so many different varieties and sizes of potatoes, and none of them are uniform.

Certain systems and tricks can help you calculate a potato’s weight or size without having to make a blind guess.

This should, hopefully, help you make your recipes and meal plans more accurate and avoid food waste.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do Boiled Potatoes Weigh The Same As Raw Potatoes?

The short answer is no. In general, boiled potatoes tend to weigh more than raw potatoes.
This might confuse some people as boiled potatoes are often peeled, which significantly reduces the weight of a potato.

That said, potatoes have a naturally high water content when they are raw. When you boil them in water, they absorb some of the water.

This leads to an overall increase in weight even though you have peeled them first.

Why Do Potatoes Change Weight When They Are Cooked?

The simple answer is that potatoes contain a lot of water. Because of this high water content, potatoes are prone to fluctuations in weight when exposed to different environments and temperatures.

When you boil potatoes in water, they significantly increase their weight. This happens to the point that they are heavier than they were when they had their skin on.

This increase in weight is because the fibers of the potatoes naturally absorb water.

About Maria Foster
Maria Foster
Maria Foster is a mother of 3 and she and her husband of 23 years share their home with 2 faithful dogs. Besides being CEO of the household and active in her community, Maria is the lead contributor to Food Champs and loves to try new food ideas and kitchen accessories to make easier and more delicious meals.
Maria Foster
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