Throwing a potato, poisonous potato, or a baked potato into lava turns it into a hot potato, which is then ejected from lava in a random directionβ. The hot potato retains data from the original potato, such as its custom name, or how many times it has been lubricated.
Each hot potato stores a heat value. This value starts from 0 and goes up by 1 every tick it is in a player's inventory to a maximum of 200. Once the heat value reaches 20 and the potato is in a player's inventory, the player begins taking damage. Based on the heat value, a player takes between 1HP and 5HP damage each tick. However, due to damage immunity, the player only actually takes damage every 10 game ticks (0.5 seconds).
Fire Resistance does not prevent the player from taking damage from happening. If there are multiple hot potatoes in a player's inventory, the effect is the same as if there was only one. Hot potatoes do not damage other entities if they hold the item.
Food
Eating a hot potato restores 5 () hunger. When a hot potato is consumed, the player is set on fire for 16940 ticks, or 847 seconds.
Burning immunity
Hot potato can't be burned in fire or lava, like netherite items.
Issues relating to "Hot potato" are not maintained on the bug tracker because it is an April Fools' joke, and is therefore not in the newest stable version or snapshot. Issues reported there are closed as "Invalid".