Surely roast potatoes are the best part of a roast dinner? The traditional Sunday lunch is never complete without a good portion of crispy, roast potatoes, but are you actually making them properly?
According to the expert Good Housekeeping cookery team, here's how you get them right every time.
How long to roast potatoes
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We suggest roasting potatoes for around an hour at 200°C (180°C fan) mark 6 to get the desired crispiness. It's important however to baste them, turning them occasionally to ensure they're cooking evenly.
How to prepare roast potatoes
- To get the best roast potatoes you should always parboil them, which allows the potato to soften slightly, thus roughening the edges, resulting in crispier skin. We suggest cooking the potatoes for no longer than 12min before leaving them to dry for three minutes. Shaking them well in a colander will roughen the edges before putting them in the pan.
- Another crucial step is to ensure your fat or oil is heated up in the roasting tin before you add your roasties. We always like to throw in thyme and garlic for good measure, too.
How to get roast potatoes crispy
It's important to use a secret ingredient here... flour. Yep, trusty flour gives potatoes that extra crunch. Take 15g of flavour and sprinkle this over your parboiled potatoes before adding them to your oiled roasting tin.
Add extra flavour
While we love simple thyme and salt with our roasties, Jamie Oliver swears by adding balsamic vinegar to his.
“Pretty much half a bottle of balsamic vinegar goes into it, so the roast potatoes come out black” Jamie continued.
“And they taste of heaven – they’re sweet, with onions and bay. It’s very different and absolutely delicious. It’s also quite shocking-looking.”
Queen Mary Berry, also reveals she loves adding semolina to her roasties to help with the crunch. And Heston Blumenthal? Well, he told The Sun to pop potato peels in to the water while they're parboiling for added flavour.
Our favourite roast potato recipes
A crack team of highly skilled food content producers, the GH Kitchen Team are Good Housekeeping’s resident recipe developers and all-round food obsessives. GH Kitchen Director Sarah Akhurst is our resident hosting pro and loves nothing more than putting on a foodie feast for friends. Senior Cookery Writer Alice Shields is a former pastry chef and baking fanatic who loves making bread and would have peanut butter with everything if she could. Lover of all things savoury, Senior Cookery Writer Grace Evans can be found eating nocellara olives at every opportunity, and will take the cheeseboard over dessert any time. With a wealth of professional kitchen experience between them, they’re dedicated to ensuring every Good Housekeeping recipe is the best it can be, so you can trust they’ll work every single time.
