Boiled Potatoes with Herb Quark
My staple for years. It looks plain, but it carries four ideas at once: good carbs with a slow protein, resistant starch, the old oil-and-protein pairing — and a handful of herbs your gut loves. Warm right after training, or cold the next day.
Nutrition per serving
Approximate values from standard nutrition tables (300 g boiled potatoes, 250 g low-fat quark, 1 tbsp flaxseed oil, a little cream cheese). Almost all the fat comes from the good oil and the cream cheese — how much is up to you.
Ingredients
- Potatoes (waxy, boiled in their skins)300 g
- Low-fat quark (organic)250 g
- Cream cheese or plain yoghurt (makes the cream smooth)1–2 tbsp
- Flaxseed oil (or olive oil)1 tbsp
- Spring onion (whole, including the green)1
- Garlic chives (if you have them)some
- Chives1 handful
- Raw onion, finely diced¼–½
- Basil (fresh or dried)a few leaves
- Garlic (optional — see below)1 clove
- Salt, pepperto taste
How to make it
- Potatoes: wash well and boil in their skins in salted water for 20–25 minutes until tender (fork test). Go for waxy varieties — they build more resistant starch as they cool. Tip: cook a double batch and keep half in the fridge overnight — the next day you get the benefits of resistant starch (more on that below and in the lesson).
- Quark cream: stir the low-fat quark with 1–2 tbsp cream cheese or plain yoghurt until smooth, season with salt and pepper. The cream cheese is the small move that turns a stodgy base into a cream you actually enjoy.
- Chop the herbs fresh and stir them in: the whole spring onion (green included), chives, garlic chives, the raw onion, basil. Cutting is what releases the active sulphur compounds in the onion family — so chop fresh and fold straight into the cream, not as a garnish on top.
- Stir in the oil: stir part of the flaxseed oil into the cream and drizzle the rest over the finished dish. With chilled potatoes, add the oil after cooling — that keeps the resistant starch at its highest.
- Peel the potatoes — or eat them with the skin — and serve with the herb quark.
Der Knoblauch-Hinweis: Knoblauch bringt viel mit, meldet sich aber über Atem und Haut zurück, als Geruch 😅 — weil ein Teil der Schwefelverbindungen über Lunge und Haut wieder abgegeben wird. Deshalb hebe ich ihn mir fürs Wochenende auf. Würde ich ihn täglich essen, käme niemand mehr freiwillig in mein Studio ;) Die rohe Zwiebel ist die alltagstaugliche Variante, die einen nicht gleichzeitig sozial isoliert.
Why such a simple dish does so much
At first glance it's potatoes with quark. The appeal is that this one combination brings together several things that each deserve a lesson of their own. Four of them are worth understanding — because once you know them, you cook this dish on purpose rather than out of habit.
Straight from the pot, the potato's carbs are quickly available — ideal right after training, when your glycogen stores are ready for them and the quark covers the protein side. Cook one portion extra and chill it overnight, and as it cools part of the starch rearranges (retrogradation) into resistant starch — it barely reaches you as sugar and becomes food for your gut bacteria instead, with a flatter blood-sugar curve. Warm is more fuel, cold is more fibre — same potato, two roles.
Two details from the kitchen: waxy potatoes build more resistant starch than floury ones, and for the cold version the oil is best added only after cooling — fat on the still-hot starch slows the retrogradation. The full story — including the easy spoonful route via green banana flour — is in the lesson: Resistant Starch →
Cooked-then-cooled potatoes hold noticeably more resistant starch than freshly cooked ones, and their glycaemic index drops clearly — measured at roughly a quarter to a third lower. The effect also survives moderate reheating.
Raben A, et al. (1994). Resistant starch: the effect on postprandial glycemia… Am J Clin Nutr 60(4):544–551. DOI: 10.1093/ajcn/60.4.544 · Controlled human study. On retrogradation: Nugent AP (2005), Nutr Bull 30(1):27–54, DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-3010.2005.00481.x.
Low-fat quark is about four-fifths casein — a protein that digests slowly and releases amino acids over hours. That pairs perfectly with the potato: fast energy meets a steady, long-lasting protein supply, plus a fullness that holds. A 250 g portion delivers around 30 g of protein — enough to clear the threshold at which a meal properly switches on muscle building.
Between 40 and 60 that matters twice over: with age, muscle responds more sluggishly to protein (anabolic resistance), and precisely then it becomes more important to reach enough per meal — not less. More on this in the Protein lesson →
For a meal to switch on muscle protein synthesis maximally, it needs a certain amount of the amino acid leucine — roughly 2.5 g in younger and about 3 g in older adults. A 250 g portion of low-fat quark (~30 g protein) sits comfortably above that.
Witard OC, et al. (2014). Myofibrillar muscle protein synthesis rates… Am J Clin Nutr 99(1):86–95. DOI: 10.3945/ajcn.112.055517 · Dose-response study. On the higher per-meal need with age: Moore DR, et al. (2015), J Gerontol A 70(1):57–62, DOI: 10.1093/gerona/glu103.
Flaxseed oil and quark landing on the same plate is not a new idea. The chemist Johanna Budwig popularised this oil-and-protein pairing back in the 1950s. Her thinking: the sulphur-containing amino acids in quark (methionine, cysteine) make the delicate polyunsaturated fats in flaxseed oil more available and help protect them. Cysteine is also a building block for glutathione, one of the body's most important antioxidants.
Worth noting: Budwig also credited this diet with fighting cancer — these are anecdotal suggestions of a possible effect that have never been scientifically proven. Taken as what it actually is, though, the pairing is both charming and sensible: high-quality protein plus a good plant source of omega-3, freshly stirred together.
Flaxseed oil or olive oil? Flaxseed oil has the highest omega-3 content (ALA), but it's delicate: store it cool and dark, don't heat it, use it up quickly. That's exactly where stirring it into the quark helps. Olive oil is milder, more stable and easier to keep, but brings almost no omega-3. Both are good choices — take whichever you enjoy and have fresh.
The ALA in flaxseed oil first has to be converted into the "active" omega-3 fats EPA and DHA — and in humans that conversion is limited: roughly under 8% to EPA and under 4% to DHA. So flaxseed oil is a good base source, but for EPA/DHA it doesn't replace a direct source such as oily fish or algae oil.
Burdge GC, Calder PC (2005). Conversion of α-linolenic acid to longer-chain PUFA in humans. Reprod Nutr Dev 45(5):581–597. DOI: 10.1051/rnd:2005047 · Review.
This is where the real strength lies. Into the cream go spring onion (whole), garlic chives, chives, raw onion and basil — and that's no accident. The onion family supplies sulphur compounds and flavonoids like quercetin, plus fructans that feed good gut bacteria. The raw onion is one of the richest everyday sources of quercetin — and raw keeps far more of it than heavy cooking does. Basil comes from a completely different plant family and adds yet another class of plant compounds.
Garlic chives are my everyday favourite: available on the terrace almost year-round, hardy, and they deliver part of garlic's benefits without the social side effect. More on the individual herbs in the lesson Herbs & Spices →
Your microbiome likes diversity: many different plants supply many different fibres and plant compounds, and that feeds a stable, varied gut flora. This is exactly where the dish is strong — a single meal holds several members of the onion family, a herb from a different family, the potato's resistant starch and (in the yoghurt version) live cultures. That's several "plant points" in one go.
The familiar rule of thumb: aim for as many different plants per week as you can. A plate like this gets you a good step closer with little effort.
Potatoes are great to batch-cook — just make a few more. The nice side effect: the next day, the cooled leftovers give you exactly the resistant-starch bonus described above. How meal prep works →
If you have a sensitive gut or IBS, the fructans in onion and the onion family, along with the fermentation of resistant starch, can cause bloating. That's not a sign that something is "wrong" — it's your gut flora at work. Still, the rule holds: start small, build up slowly, test what suits you.
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Raben A, Tagliabue A, Christensen NJ, et al. (1994). Am J Clin Nutr 60(4):544–551. DOI: 10.1093/ajcn/60.4.544 — resistant starch lowers the blood-sugar and insulin response.
Nugent AP (2005). Nutr Bull 30(1):27–54. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-3010.2005.00481.x — retrogradation, RS types, fermentation to butyrate.
Witard OC, Jackman SR, Breen L, et al. (2014). Am J Clin Nutr 99(1):86–95. DOI: 10.3945/ajcn.112.055517 — protein per meal and muscle protein synthesis.
Moore DR, Churchward-Venne TA, Witard O, et al. (2015). J Gerontol A Biol Sci Med Sci 70(1):57–62. DOI: 10.1093/gerona/glu103 — higher protein/leucine need per meal with age.
Burdge GC, Calder PC (2005). Reprod Nutr Dev 45(5):581–597. DOI: 10.1051/rnd:2005047 — limited conversion of ALA to EPA/DHA.
A note on interpretation: the nutrition values are ballpark figures from standard tables and vary by brand and amount. The muscle-building logic comes mostly from studies in training and older adults and transfers well to healthy, moderately active people. The historical Budwig diet is mentioned here only as an anecdote — its cancer claims are not scientifically supported. With IBS or known intolerances, adjust the amount of onion-family herbs and resistant starch to suit you.
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