Recipes
Tomato and potato recipes.
A selection of recipes, reflecting the use of these vegetables in many different cuisines. Each recipe suggests a recommended variety whose particular qualities match the recipe in question.
Roast potatoes
Photographer: AuntieP. Copyright: CC
Ingredients
The potatoes have, HAVE to be floury potatoes for the ultimate roastie. King Edward is my texture favourite but it doesn’t have the strongest flavour so you might want to experiment to find your preference.
- Potatoes
- Fat (this could be a number of things, lard, goose fat, fat from the joint you are cooking or butter – olive oil is not good enough to make the cut in this case)
Directions
- Preheat your oven to 200C or use whatever temperature your joint is cooking at.
- Peel and chop your potatoes into even sized chunks.
- Par boil for around eight minutes – the chunks should not be cooked through.
- Drain and leave to steam dry.
- When the outside looks dry to the touch roughen up the potatoes by bashing around in a dry pan/colander or scour with the tines of a fork.
- Now comes the magical bit when you mix your spuds with fat. For me a roast potato does not taste right when cooked with olive oil. The classic choice is lard or some other animal fat (it could be fat from the joint you are roasting but getting sufficient in time means it is only practical with very big joints, much easier to save the fat from the joint for the roast potatoes next time) but I have found butter to be an excellent substitute.
- If you are using lard/other animal fat then add a generous quantity to your roasting pan and stick in the oven when preheated to melt and heat the fat. Take out of the oven when the fat is hot, carefully add the potatoes to the pan and using a spoon or turkey baster baste all over with the hot fat.
- If using butter then heating this way may well burn it, instead melt 1 oz in a pan then either use a pastry bush to generously coat the potatoes or trickle over using a spoon. Don’t forget to turn the potatoes so the underside is covered as well.
- Cook the potatoes for 45 minutes, turning once in the middle as often the top/bottom do not cook at the same rate. If you are cooking in the same oven as a joint and they are looking a little anaemic then turn up the heat once the meat is resting and give them a final 15 minutes.
More
I don’t think you really want to mess with proper roast potatoes so all I will say is that they want to be sitting along side something with a bit of gravy, ready to be soaked up by their floury inners.
