Roasted potatoes recipe | Jamie Oliver recipes (2024)

FAQs

Roasted potatoes recipe | Jamie Oliver recipes? ›

Cook the potatoes in a large pan of boiling salted water for 20 minutes, then drain and steam dry. Tip into a large roasting tray and drizzle with 2 tablespoons of oil, then add a good pinch of sea salt and black pepper. Bash and add the unpeeled garlic cloves to the tray, then roast for 20 minutes.

Cook the potatoes in a large pan of boiling salted water for 20 minutes, then drain and steam dry. Tip into a large roasting tray and drizzle with 2 tablespoons of oil, then add a good pinch of sea salt and black pepper. Bash and add the unpeeled garlic cloves to the tray, then roast for 20 minutes.

Neutral, low-cost oil such as vegetable oil, canola oil, safflower oil, peanut oil, corn oil, coconut oil, avocado oil, etc., work well for roasting. These oils have a high smoke point, allowing the potatoes to get hotter without imparting off flavors.

Soaking potatoes in water helps remove excess starch. Excess starch can inhibit the potatoes from cooking evenly as well as creating a gummy or sticky texture on the outside of your potatoes.

In a video online, Gordon explained: “For crispy roast potatoes, you can depend on them, my tip is to parboil them, leave them to steam dry, then sprinkle them with semolina or flour, and then give them a good roughing up.”

You want to use an oil with a mild flavour for your roasties. We prefer olive oil, but you can opt for vegetable, canola or grapeseed oils instead.

Boil chunks of potato until they're just tender, toss them none-too-gently with fat (ideally beef drippings) to rough up their surface, then roast them until they're crisp and crackling. The boiling and roughing-up steps are the real keys.

Roast potatoes verdict

Vegetable oil is the ideal choice for those who like a subtle, or blander flavour from their roast potatoes, because it cooks best at a medium heat and so the potatoes won't take on too much flavour from the oil. This also means the potatoes won't overpower other dishes.

Parboiling the potatoes is a good start, but if they're not getting crispy during roasting your temperature isn't high enough or there's too much moisture.

If you want to make this roast potatoes day before recipe and keep the potatoes crispy, ensure you put them in hot oil before baking them. This will help the potatoes stay crispy. If you're preparing roast potatoes in advance and find they have gone soggy in the fridge.

Is it better to salt potatoes before or after roasting? ›

If you're roasting potatoes start-to-finish in the oven, you should always salt them after cooking. This is to avoid drawing out moisture while they cook and making the outer layer leathery.

The potatoes cook on the inside when you parboil, so the baking time is basically crisping them up to perfection, which we do at a high oven temperature. If the potatoes are raw, when you use a high temperature, the outside of the potatoes will burn before the inside cooks.

Roasting potatoes:

Cover a baking sheet with parchment paper or aluminum foil and spread potatoes in one even layer, being careful not to overcrowd them. (Note: parchment paper is better to prevent sticking and aluminum foil yields crispier results but it does need to be lightly greased and may still stick.)

Baked potatoes always taste better at restaurants because chefs have learned how to produce a potato that's soft, fluffy, and flavorful on the inside while remaining delightfully crisp on the outside. But it's hard to replicate those results at home.

And potatoes are even more confusing: you can both roast and bake a potato, but a roast potato aims for crispiness, while a baked potato aims for softness.

Parboil the Potatoes First

Parboiling helps soften the potato insides before the roasting begins, so you won't be tempted to burn the outsides in exchange for less undercooked insides. Boil the potato chunks for eight to 10 minutes—they won't be fully cooked, but they'll be ready for the next step.

If roasted potatoes lack their crunchy sheen, overcrowding is usually the culprit. Just as overcrowding bacon or mushrooms in a saucepan causes disappointingly mushy results, placing potatoes too close to each other on a baking sheet will prevent them from crisping while they roast.

These tips are completely doable, actually pretty much fail-proof. SOAK your potato chunks in cold water. This removes some of the starch and helps get them super duper crispy. Soak them at least one hour.