Don't throw out old potatoes because you could turn them into cheese

Lactose intolerant folks and vegans, rejoice! Looks like it's possible to turn your old potatoes into delicious, meltable cheese.

Australian company PotatoMagic, spearheaded by chemical engineer, YouTube chef casual spud enthusiast Andrew Dyhin, has come up with a process whereby your garden variety potato can be altered into a food base that melts like cheese when popped under a grill.

The product is called chato, a linguistic marriage of cheese and potato, and Dyhin's hope is that introducing it into the marketplace will bring about a minimisation of food wastage.

Dyhin has also created four videos that are as earnest as they are instructional. He documents his personally curated process of cooking with potato in innovative ways, such as spud dumplings inspired by Genghis Khan; "I'm pretty certain he took these potato dumplings back to China with him" he adds.

The PotatoMagic process is a closely-guarded secret but Dyhin says he can transform potatoes into other dairy-esque products like icecream and mayonnaise too.

Dyhin says he has spent 12 years perfecting the science behind liquifying the taters. His main roadblock has been the willingness of the public to try the product. Telling ABC Rural Australia "I can really only get people to trust the product when they can actually taste it, feel it and look at it."

Undetterred by the public's reluctance to embrace his potato innovation, Dyhin seems to take inspiration from the godfather of invention, Bill Gates.

Gates' YouTube account is the only one Dyhin subscribes to on YouTube and the fellow inventor features Gates' words on food innovation in the closing lines of his PotatoMagic blog "I think its a huge thing. And its one of those things that will confound the pessimists..."  

[H/T ABC]