Roasted potatoes recipe | Jamie Oliver recipes (2024)

FAQs

How to roast new potatoes Jamie Oliver? ›

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

If you over-crowded the pan so that there isn't enough space for the potatoes to rest on the pan without touching each other, it will prevent the water from evaporating and making the potatoes crispy. You can always try to broil the potatoes for 1-2 minutes to crisp them up at the end of baking if necessary.

However, dry heat is only one contributing factor. So if your potatoes aren't crisping in the oven, the problem likely lies in how you place them on the baking sheet. If roasted potatoes lack their crunchy sheen, overcrowding is usually the culprit.

Boil them the day before or up to five days before, so they completely dry out and absorb the fat better. Once they are cooked, drain them thoroughly, then leave them on a cooling rack so that they can fully dry out on all sides. Refridgerating them overnight is a bonus.

How do you keep roast potatoes crispy? ›

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.

That said, I would never let them go to waste if they're cooked. Freeze them and reheat them (covered) on another day. They may be a little drier but will still be delicious. Alternatively, bash them up a bit and fry in oil for a 'Bubble and Squeak' style feast.

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.

While all sorts of potatoes are delicious when roasted in the oven, Yukon Gold potatoes are arguably the best potatoes for roasting for many reasons. Yukon Gold potatoes have the perfect amount of starch, which means they soften well in the oven, while their partially waxy texture helps them maintain their shape.

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.)

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.

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.