The Best Crispy Roast Potatoes Ever Recipe
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These are the most flavorful crispy roast potatoes you’ll ever make. And they just happen to be gluten-free and vegan (if you use oil) to boot.
WHY IT WORKS
- Large chunks of potato maximize the contrast between exterior and interior.
- Parboiling the potatoes in alkaline water breaks down their surfaces, creating tons of starchy slurry for added surface area and crunch.
- Offering you the choice of oil, duck fat, goose fat, or beef fat means you can get whichever flavor you want.
- Infusing the oil or fat with garlic and herbs gives the potato crust extra flavor.
The Brits get a bad rap for their cuisine, and in some cases rightfully so—the beef cooked until gray and the gravy-made-from-granules that I ate every Sunday while staying in England were not the height of culinary greatness— but dang if there aren’t a lot of things they do better than almost anyone else. I’m talking savory pies, fried fish, Yorkshire puddings, and roasted potatoes. The British method of roasting potatoes is one that I’ve taken a strong liking to. It’s simple, and it produces amazing results. 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.
Serious Eats / Vicky Wasik
The boiling and roughing-up steps are the real keys. They create a thin slurry of mashed potato that clings to the surface of the potato chunks, which ends up crisping beautifully in the oven as the potatoes roast. It’s the technique I use for the Ultra-Crispy Roast Potatoes recipe I published back in 2011, and the technique I use for pretty much every holiday.
This year, I decided to reexamine the method from the ground up with the idea of completely maximizing that crisp-to-creamy contrast in each chunk of roast potato, testing and retesting every variable, from cut size to potato type to boiling and roasting methods. The result is this recipe, which I firmly and un-humbly believe will deliver the greatest roast potatoes you’ve ever tasted: incredibly crisp and crunchy on the outside, with centers that are creamy and packed with potato flavor. I dare you to make them and not love them. I double-dare you.
Here’s how the testing went down.
Picking Potatoes is Like Picking Friends: The Size and Variety You Need
When you’re making baked potatoes, you’ve got to pick your potatoes like you pick your friends. You need just the right size, not too big and not too small. I personally like the ones that are about a quarter size, because they bake up with the crispiest skins.
As for the variety, just like people, potatoes have all sorts of personalities. Russet potatoes are like those friends with a tough exterior but a warm heart; Yukon Gold potatoes are more like the low-key outside but rich inside kind of friends; and red potatoes, well, they’re like those cool-looking but a bit hard to get close to kind of friends. So, I suggest you go for russet or Yukon Gold potatoes, or a mix of both, because like making friends, diversity is always good.
Russets get the crispest crusts and roast up a pale golden brown. Their interiors are fluffy and mild.
Yukon Golds roast a little darker owing to their lower starch content and higher sugar content. This leads to more flavor, but it also means a slightly less crisp crust. Their interiors are nice and creamy, with plenty of flavor.
Red potatoes roast up very dark because of their very low starch content, but have difficulty getting crisp. They come out of the oven crunchy, but soon lose that crunch, turning soft and tender.
This is what happens when you press on a russet and a red potato about two minutes after they come out of the oven:
Moral of the story: Skip the reds. Stick with russets or Yukon Golds (or a mix!).
The Magic of Baking Soda: Making Your Potatoes Delicious
Do you know what baking soda can do for you when you’re boiling potatoes? It can make your potatoes crispier! Just add a bit of baking soda to the water you’re boiling your potatoes in, like you’re making a magic potion, and your potatoes will come out with crispy skins, just like fried chicken.
Which way is better? Well, with the smallish potato chunks in my original roast potato recipe, adding a splash of vinegar can help prevent the potatoes from accidentally falling apart completely while you are tenderizing them. Similarly, I add a splash of vinegar to my French fries to get them to cook fully without collapsing.
But with a different form factor comes a different set of rules. Is vinegar still the best pH modifier for the job with the huge, chunky potatoes I’m using here?
I roasted those boiled potatoes to gauge the difference.
As it turned out, the potatoes boiled in alkaline water were actually superior to those boiled in vinegary water. Because the chunks are so large, falling apart is not as big of a problem as it is with smaller potatoes. Meanwhile, the alkaline water helps the exteriors of the potatoes break down more, creating much more of the starchy slurry that leads to an extra-crisp exterior. About a half teaspoon of baking soda for two quarts of water was the right amount.
That’s the level of starchy paste you’re looking for on the outside of these potatoes after roughing them up.
Cold Water or Hot Water: The Secret to Boiling Potatoes
When you’re boiling potatoes, do you start with cold water or do you go straight for the hot water? I’ll let you in on a secret, boiling your potatoes in hot water makes them tastier. Just like you prefer a cold drink on a hot day and a hot drink on a cold day, potatoes like to swim in hot water too.
Baking Time for Potatoes: Just Like Baking a Cake
Baking potatoes is not just a simple task of tossing them in the oven and forgetting about them. No, it’s a delicate dance that requires as much finesse and attention as baking a cake, if not more.
When you bake a cake, you mix the ingredients, pour them into a pan, and then set a timer. But with potatoes, it’s like deciphering a secret language. Each potato is an individual, with its own unique size, shape, and density, and thus, its own perfect baking time.
I usually bake my potatoes at a high temperature of 450°F (about 230°C), so they come out with crispy skins and soft insides. However, this is not a one-size-fits-all rule. You need to be attentive, watch for signs of readiness, and adjust the baking time accordingly.
When the skin of the potato has puffed up slightly, forming a crispy shell, and the inside feels soft when poked with a fork, that’s when you know your potato has reached its peak of perfection. Remember, don’t rush to flip them at the beginning; give them some time to slowly reveal their delicious secrets.
Baking potatoes is an art, an exercise in patience and observation. But when done right, the reward is a potato that’s crispy on the outside, fluffy on the inside, and bursting with flavor. It’s a symphony of textures and tastes that’s well worth the effort.
Add Some Spice to Your Potatoes: Make Them More Interesting
Finally, let’s add some spice to the potatoes to make them more interesting. You can add some garlic and rosemary to olive oil, like dressing them up in beautiful clothes. This way, your potatoes will become more delicious and flavorful.
I decided to heat up the solid aromatics (minced garlic and rosemary are my favorites) in some olive oil, cooking them just until the garlic started to turn golden, then strain it, separating the infused oil from the solids. That way, you can use the flavored oil to toss with the potatoes, building in plenty of flavor, and add back the garlic and rosemary (along with some minced fresh parsley) at the end. Best of both worlds.
You end up with roast potatoes that have an incredibly crisp crust, with plenty of textural variety and lots of microscopic nooks and crannies for flavorful bits of garlic and herbs to plant themselves.
Did I mention that these are the greatest roast potatoes you’ll ever make? I meant it. Take a closer look at their surface texture.
Micro-blistering!
And how about these creamy centers?
Oh! So moist! So flavorful!
Still on the fence about making them? Come on over and join me on this side, where the deliciousness runs deep and there’s plenty to go around for everyone.
