Perfect roast potatoes

I’ve posted about making crispy roast potatoes before (then inadvertently deleted all the photos!) and it’s been one of my most visited posts over the years; this is a newly revised version, with only a slight amendment. I use this method week in, week out, it works! 

The best potatoes to use are ‘floury’ potatoes, as opposed to waxy. In the U.K., I use Maris Piper potatoes.

Method:

Preheat the oven to 200C fan.

Peel the potatoes, cut them into even sized chunks, ensuring some flat edges

Place them in a large saucepan and cover with water

Bring the water to the boil then turn the heat down enough for the pot to continue to boil for a good 5 minutes, a bit longer is fine, this is just to par boil the potatoes though, not completely boil them 

Then drain the potatoes and – this is the key – keeping them in the saucepan, hold a lid over the pot and give them a good shake to break up the outsides of the potatoes, basically rough them up a bit

Then leave the potatoes to one side to cool in their own steam. You can leave them for as long or as short a time as you like, they can cool completely or just a bit. 

During this time, pour a shallow layer of oil of your choice – I use rapeseed oil, it’s a lovely light oil and perfect for roasting potatoes – into your roasting tin and put it into the top of the oven to heat up for about 10 minutes

When the oil is very hot, add the potatoes to the pan carefully, I do it one by one with tongs. Be careful not to splash yourself with hot oil

See the roughed up finish?

Then spoon some of the hot oil over each potato

Put the pan back into the top of the oven for 40-60 mins depending on the size of the potatoes

Halfway through, take the pan out and baste each potato with hot oil again, then put them back into the oven

And watch them crisp up 🙂 

Enjoy! 

These will be coming to this week’s Fiesta Friday, are you…?