Potatoes truly are incredible. Not only do they contain all nine essential amino acids and are thus a wholly self-sustaining food source, but they are also capable of conducting enough electricity to light a small, dim light bulb in an elementary school science classroom for 3.5 seconds.

They can even be dressed up with funky plastic body parts, made into pleasant, silent, smiling companions for kiddos who feel much more comfortable eating their vegetables when they’re able to think of them as conscious, thinking, feeling human beings. 

Why do we fight wars over silly things like money, oil and religion when all we truly need in life are potatoes?

Because we as humans primarily see Earth not as something to be used resourcefully for the benefit of all mankind, but rather something to be deep-fried and served in a basket with chicken fingers. We can’t help it. It’s in our DNA. Besides, even if we did erect a global potato paradise, is a life without french fries truly worth living?

If you’re looking for some delicious taters to snack on this week — or, at least, to fantasize about snacking on while you sit around gorging on the ramen noodles that you panic bought 17 boxes of at King Soopers last week — here are the top five potatoes around town to check out.

Links have been included to direct you to home delivery instructions, so you can get these tots delivered right to your doorstep.

Crispiest: Butters’ carne asada fries

I thought that “Fatal Attraction” had forever destroyed my faith in the concept of love at first sight. However, after seeing Butters’ carne asada fries, I’m beginning to once again believe in the old adage.

There’s simply no way these delicious, crispy, cheesy, sizzling hot spuds would ever try to kidnap my child and kill me with a kitchen knife. And hell, even if they did, it would be totally worth it for just one bite of their extra crunchy, golden deliciousness.

I have no clue where the coating of these crunchy fries ends and the actual potato begins — for all I know, the potato never even existed in the first place, and the kitchen staff simply served me up a skillet of deep-fried, twisted air — but that’s what makes the spuds so fantastic and what has landed them the top spot on this list.

Substance is overrated. Admit it. Fries are just an excuse for us to eat something sopped to the gills in fat. And Butters succeeds at satisfying this craving. These crunchy fat bombs are nuggets of pure greasy gold: half steak fry, half curly fry, loaded up with a mountain of cheese, sprinkled with peppers and so heavy on the grease they could power a small Norwegian village for a month.

Butteriest: Silver Grill’s beer-braised corn beef hash

Everything tastes better with butter, especially things that already have butter on them. You simply cannot over-butter anything. You could spread butter onto a stick of butter and serve it between two other sticks of butter as a butter sandwich, and most Americans would still consider it a perfectly sustainable entree.

Butter is simply amazing. And nowhere can you find more buttery deliciousness than in between the fibers of the hash browns at Silver Grill. The kicker here is the very thin way the spuds are sliced — which allows the butter to fully seep into each individual piece. Add in the tender and juicy corned beef and two over-easy eggs on top, and the dish is a savory, buttery wonderland your taste buds will not be able to get enough of.

If you just happen to be in an extra potatoey mood, the restaurant also offers bottomless hash browns all morning long.

Most fantastical: Colorado Room’s bison poutine

The first time I heard about poutine, I didn’t believe it was real. It just seemed too good to be true — like cookie dough ice cream or Chris Pratt. Melted cheese curds and gravy on top of a mountain of french fries? Certainly such things only existed in fairy tales. Us mere mortals — with our wars and our greed and our reality TV — were not deserving of such a brilliantly composed dish.

And yet here we are.

Of course, aside from the sheer wonderment that the entree itself exudes, there is something very special about the poutine at The Colorado Room specifically.

Now, I’m sure there’s some French Canadian in Montreal right now letting out a disgusted-but-not-too-much-because-it’s-Canada-after-all-and-rudeness-is-a-capital-offense-there scoff right about now at this silly little American boy pretending like his town’s poutine is in any way superior to that from his home and native land — and I’ll give that to him, but only because I feel bad that he has to live in Canada where, when you take poutine away, all they have left are nice people and bears.

Plus, the bison at The Colorado Room is a feature unique to the Centennial State, and it’s one that gives the Canadian delicacy an extra pleasant, juicy, subtle bit of savoriness that’s difficult to find north of the border. 

Practically perfect in every way: Rainbow Restaurant’s sweet potato latkes

I like to think of myself as the kind of person who has transcended the cultural, culinary plague that is eating a balanced and healthy meal, as a look through any of my previous columns will show.

However, the truth of the matter is that I secretly kind of love healthy food — not actual healthy food. I’m not going to eat, like, broccoli or kale or jub jub tree bark or the snot of a wickerwhallop or anything like that.

But I will occasionally snack on a Clif Bar or buy the Jif peanut butter that comes in a brown jar and looks like it’s made with wood chips. And when it comes to my potatoes, I must admit that I’m a sucker for the sweet potato latkes at the Rainbow Restaurant.

These plump sour cream and applesauce topped patties of shredded orange yams are simply delicious. They aren’t overloaded with grease, nor do they expand like an inflatable life boat in your gut two hours after consumption, the way regular potatoes do, but they instead perfectly fill your tummy to its satisfactory capacity: no more, no less.

Most flavorful: Big City Burrito’s potato burrito

I have always been skeptical of the concept of putting potatoes in a burrito — mainly because the practice originated in California, a state that I harbor an irrational prejudice toward, mainly because of their habit of electing celebrities into the governor’s office. And also because of the Kardashians.

However, as it turns out, potatoes in a burrito aren’t half bad when served up east of the Golden Coast, as Big City Burrito proves. They have a nice binding effect on the texture of the wrap’s contents, providing a softness to the filling that ties all the other ingredients together into a more cohesive presentation.

Additionally, the restaurant’s seemingly endless line of toppings, sauces and add-ins — which include pineapple salsa, carne asada, chicken mole, hot sauce and sauteed veggies — jazz up the intensity of the dish’s flavor in a manner that cannot be found at more traditional burrito bars, such as QDOBA and Chipotle.

Scotty Powell can be reached at entertainment@collegian.com or on Twitter @scottysseus.