My love of roast potatoes & how to make them, my way

Since authoring this post, world events have diminished the supply of rapeseed oil. Any neutral oil with a high smoke point will do. I have switched to regular vegetable oil.

I love roast potatotes. Really, I love them. In my spare time I write them poetry and sometimes catch myself drawing a heart with IK 4 RP. Okay, so that’s something of an exaggeration (I don’t draw hearts) but I really can’t underplay my love for a roast potato.

Let’s clear something up early on. A roast potato is fluffy and mash like on the inside and translucently brittle and crisp on the outside, with a golden glass like appearanace. That’s a roast potato.

It’s not a partly cooked massive clod of potato that has a couple of singed edges.

It’s not a waxy potato slipping around your plate in a slick of oil.

It’s this:

How do I achieve such results I hear you cry? Well if you’re sitting comfortably, I shall begin.

Selecting your spuds

It has to be a Maris Piper. I’ve tried King Edwards, Mozart, a Yukon Gold brought over from Yukon, various potatoes that the local greengrocer swore blind made the best roasties (I’ll accept that he was misguided rather than trying to sabotage my Sunday lunch) but I return to where I began, the Maris Piper was made for roasting.

Peeling & cutting

Ideally, your potatoes will all be approximately the same size but if not, don’t worry. If you follow this method your potatoes will all be of the same thickness when cut, allowing for even cooking.

Take a potato and rest it on the chopping board so that it’s wider than it is tall:

Cut a slice off each end:

Hold it so that it’s taller than it is wide. Peel the potato in long strokes from top to bottom so that you have a barrel shape:

Put the potato on the board so that it’s still taller than it is wide and cut through the middle north-south so that you end up with two long halves of a barrel:

Repeat until you have used up all the potatoes. Remember, there’s no such thing as winning too much money, being too handsome/beautiful or having too many roast potatoes.

Boiling the potatoes

Put the potatoes in a pan and fill it with cold water. Swish the water/potatoes around a bit and watch the water go murky. This is the surface starch on the potatoes. Discard the water and repeat a couple of times until the water isn’t polluted with crisp inhibiting starch. Fill a final time with cold water, add salt, a few sprigs of thyme and two cloves of garlic that have been bashed with the back of knife. Bring to the boil and then simmer for 15 minutes or so until the potatoes are almost falling apart. The first few times I’d suggest checking every minute beyond the first 10 because a minute too far and you’ll end up with potato soup.

When the potatoes are almost falling apart, take the pan off the heat and remove each potato individually with a slotted spoon into a colander. Be delicate at this stage or the precariously cooked potatoes will turn into mash. Allow the potatoes to dry in the colander for 10 minutes or so. Don’t shake the colander. Crispness is achieved by the fissures in the potato created by the long boil rather than smashed edges.

Preparing the roasting tray

To achieve peak roastpotatoeness (it’s a word), your potatoes must hit hot oil. Anything less and they’ll just absorb oil and lethargically sit in your oven not ever getting to peak roastpotatoeness. They need to be cooked in an oven by themselves and not in the same tray as your meat or indeed in the same oven at the same time. Why not in the same tray? While I accept it imparts into the potatoes a lovely savoury meatiness, you are limited to the number of potatoes that you can fit around the roast. The second issue is common whether you cook potatoes in the same tray as your meat or in the same oven in a separate tray, you are inhibiting the meat from roasting by adding loads of moisture to your oven. Potatoes are full of water and as they roast it’s driven out, ideally into the fan of your oven, not into the lovely bit of meat or poultry that you’re roasting. Roast your meat first and let it rest while the potatoes are cooking.

When you start peeling your potatoes, turn the oven to 210c (roughly 410f) and put your metal roasting tray (it has to be metal) into the oven to heat up with it. The tray needs to be big enough to allow a bit of room around each potato. If they sit cheek by jowl then there’s nowhere for the moisture to escape.

Just before you put the potatoes on to boil, carefully remove the oven tray and fill it with a thin layer of oil. I use rapeseed oil for it’s very high smoking point and because I often cook a roast for vegetarians who eat the potatotes and veg (with or without something to replace the meat) and to use duck or goose fat would exclude them. Duck and goose fat produce a heavier potato with a distinct flavour which I really enjoy too but this is my perfect recipe and so rapeseed oil is the order of the day. With the pan laying flat on a surface there should be enough oil to cover the bottom of the pan without any gaps. Let the oil heat up while the potatoes boil.

Introducing the potatoes to the roasting tray

Working quickly have the potatoes in the colander near your oven. Ideally if your roasting tray can go on your hob, remove it and put it on a high heat while you add the potatoes. (If your roasting tray can’t go on the hob, you need to work very quickly as the oil will cool rapidly). Using a spoon or a pair of tongs, add each potato to the oil and turn it over immediately so that it’s covered in oil. Sprinkle over some sea salt ensuring that each potato gets a little.

Get the tray back in the oven as quickly as possible and leave them undisturbed for half an hour.

Take a handful of parsley and thyme, finely chop and reserve to a bowl. Flatten a couple of cloves of garlic and add to the herbs.

30 minutes gone

After 30 minutes, turn the potatoes over and continue cooking for a further 15 minutes.

15 minutes later

Add the reserved herbs and garlic to the pan. Mix into the potatoes. They probably need another 5–10 minutes before they are done.

When the potatoes are cooked

Turn them out onto a warmed plate lined with some kitchen roll to absorb any surface oil. Brush off the herbs to taste. Eat any of the perfect specimens that others would just argue over if they got to the table. Hop around the kitchen, forgetting how hot a roasted potato is. Marvel at your handiwork.

Enjoy your lunch,

Ishan