OK, time for another recipe. This is actually the very first thing I decided I wanted to make when we first had the idea of making our own Christmas dinner at the end of last year.
My mother makes the best roast potatoes in the world (I’m pretty sure if you check with top chefs they all concur with that). This is her recipe, it’s simple and amazingly good. Just a note on the type of potatoes to use; I’ve only used white potatoes for this recipe so far. Every recipe tells you to use a different type of potato but all I can say is the white ones turned out great.
Preheat the oven to 425F. Take a roasting pan (baking sheets aren’t very good for this as they buckle at this temperature) and add enough oil so that there’s a thin layer covering the bottom of the pan. Regarding the oil, my mother’s recipe calls for goose or duck fat rather than oil, but if you can’t find any (I couldn’t here in Canada) you can use vegetable oil instead. It’s not as flavourful but it’ll work fine. Put the pan in the oven to start heating the oil.
Peel and cut your potatoes. I cut small ones in half and big ones into quarters. Don’t make them too small, they shrink up a bit when they cook and you’ll be doing something else in a moment to make them a bit smaller! Boil a pan of water (enough water to cover the potatoes when you put them in) and add a little bit of salt. Now boil the potatoes for about 10 minutes, until they’re starting to go soft.
Then drain the water from the pan, cover it and shake it around hard! This crushes the edges of the potatoes and gives you awesome crispy bits when they’re roasted. After that, take the roasting pan with the hot oil out of the oven, and place the potatoes in it. Baste them with oil, and put them in the oven. Turn every 10 minutes, and cook for about 30-40 minutes total. I’ve seen recipes which say you don’t need to turn them, but I tried that and they went all black on one side so I wouldn’t recommend it.
That’s all there is to it! Something I’ve read about which I’ll probably try next time is to add some pieces of garlic to the oil and cook them along with the potatoes. But even the base recipe is really easy and so good.
