Colin and Donna Craig-Brown of Wellington, New Zealand may have just broken the Guinness World Record for the largest potato ever measured — a 17.4-pound (7.8kg) ugly lump o' starch they've named "Doug." The previous record holder is an 11-pound potato from Britain, discovered in 2011.
Remarkably, the couple weren't trying to cultivate the gargantuan tuber; they were out weeding in the garden and just kind of found it (him?) there. From AP News:
Colin's hoe struck something huge just beneath the soil's surface.
As the couple knelt down and began digging around the object, Colin wondered if it was some kind of strange fungal growth, a giant puffball. After Colin pried it out with his garden fork, he scratched away a bit of the skin and tasted it.
A potato.
"We couldn't believe it," Donna said. "It was just huge."
After dressing up Doug in a hat and carting him around town to meet the neighbors, he started drying out and getting a little moldy (or "pongy," as Colin put it). So they've shoved him into a freezer to keep until they hear back from the Guinness folks.
Once they've secured Doug's infamy in the Book of Records, Colin plans to turn him into vodka.
Doug the ugly New Zealand potato could be world's biggest [Nick Perry / AP News]
