Roast Potatoes
Roast Potatoes hardly need a recipe, and this is not so much a recipe, but more looking at the technique used to create the perfect crisp golden brown potato.
In a nutshell we are going to;-
- Season the potatoes with salt by partly pre-boiling before roasting.
- Making sure the potatoes are totally dry.
- Fluffing up the outside surface of the potatoes before placing on the roasting tray.
Before we look in detail at the technique, lets just give some consideration the potatoes;-
To have really good Roast Potatoes you need a suitable variety of Potato, some potato verities produce a better roast than others, in the UK Maris Piper and Rooster’s are particularly good, these are potatoes that is slightly floury and will go soft on the inside and stay crisp on the outside are preferable.
However as a ship moves around the world from port to port and country to county you can never be sure what variety of potatoes are available and for the most part you will just receive a standard white potato.
There are always variations on any recipe but if you follow this method below you should achieve a great Roast Potato with most types of Potato.
For the culinary aware, you will notice that these potatoes are not turned, as many chefs might say is the proper way to present a roast potato especially when presenting for publishing, but in the real world (away from fine dinning restaurant’s ) this is how most roast potatoes would be served in irregular but even sized shapes.
Ingredients
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- Cut your peeled potatoes to a suitable size.
- Place in a suitable pot and cover with cold water, place on the stove and add salt to taste, bring to the boil and boil for just 5 minutes. Stir the potatoes occasionally as the water comes to the boil, if you don't stir the potatoes the potatoes on the bottom of the pot will cook faster and may start to over cook, and possibly start to brake up.
- After 5 minutes boiling the potatoes need to be drained, the potatoes are still firm and undercooked at this stage and very hot, the outside surface of the potatoes will show signs of softening.
- We now have our hot and steaming potatoes sitting in colander, this is an important stage, the hot potatoes will surrender all the surface moisture by the way of steam to leave the potatoes totally dry. This drying process is important as a dry potato will not stick to the roasting tray during roasting, it is using wet raw potatoes that causes potatoes to stick.
- After the potatoes have totally dried out we can fluff them up, I have split the potatoes into 2 colanders to make it easier, Pick up the colander with both hand and shake and toss the potatoes over and over until a suitable degree of fluffing is visible.
- Here we can see that after tossing the potatoes, the potatoes have a surface layer that resembles mashed potato, it is this thin layer of mashed potatoes that will help create our crisp outer coating on our finished roast potatoes.
- Here we can see the fluffing in more detail.
- Place the Colander on the bench next to a oven tray which has a coating of vegetable oil.
- Place the dry fluffed potatoes onto the oiled oven tray and drizzle a little more oil over the top of the potatoes and place in a preheated oven set at 160ºC to180ºC and cooked until a suitable level of browning have occurred, check on the potatoes periodically remove from the oven turn the potatoes over and to ensure the potatoes brown evenly,
- Depending on the oven temperature you select and the type of potatoes you have will affect the cooking time, and how brown you choose to your finished potatoes to be, the browner the finished potatoes the more flavour.
- When the potatoes are fully cooked to a suitable degree of browning use tongs to transfer your potatoes to a suitable container leaving any remaining vegetable oil on the tray.
- Now we have out crisp golden brown roast potatoes.
