Perfect Roast Potatoes Recipe

Origin: Britain      Period: Traditional

For any decent roast potatoes you need floury potatoes such as Cara or King Edward and they need to be cut into roughly egg-sized pieces. The amount of potatoes you need will depend on how many people you are cooking for and how greedy they are! As a rule of thu,b have six roast potatoes per portion. Each potato will provide either 2 or 4 roast potato pieces, dependent on size.

Ingredients:

Potatoes
Oil for baking

Perfect Roast Potatoes Preparation:

Method:

Par boil the potatoes in gentyl-boiling salted water for about 8 minutes. Remove the potatoes from the boiling water and allow to cool completely. You can either use a fork to scratch the potatoes or you can toss them in a colander to scarify them. This gives more of a surface to help crisp the potatoes.

If you wish you can roast the potatoes around the joint of meat, but only do this is you have at least 1/2 cm fat in the roasting dish. In actual fact you need very hot oil for good roast potatoes and it's best to heat the oil in a separate pan first. I tend to use a mix of groundnut oil and reserved goose fat but any decent cooking oil will do. When the oil is hot add any fat from your roasting meat.

When the fat is sizzling hot pour it into your roasting pan. Add the potatoes to the pan and bast or turn them to make sure they are coated in fat. Place in a hot oven (about 190°C if possible though this will depend on what else you have in your oven) and cook for at least 45 minutes, turning them half way through (cook for an hour or more if the oven is cooler). You can also leave the potatoes in the oven to crisp as you remove the meat from the oven to rest.

If the potatoes are done, remove from the oil and keep heated in a warm oven (don't pie on top of one another as they will steam and soften). Season with salt and black pepper before serving.

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