Eleanor Steafel is a feature writer for the Daily Telegraph and the Telegraph Magazine.
Cutting potatoes into triangles can give you tight angles for a crunch.
Semolina can get you a potato that is gritty and introduces an extra flavour.
Chuffing the potatoes also maximises crunch.
King Edward or Maris Piper, goose fat or sunflower oil, crunchy coating or pure chuff.
Could you name a more contentious question in the culinary landscape than “what constitutes the best way to roast a potato?”
The sheer number of variables when trying to answer the question “what makes the best roast potato?” could flummox a top chemist.
Every tiny tweak matters, from the type of fat you use to the temperature of both the potato and the fat when one meets the other, to the parboiling time, the fluffing technique, the oven temperature.
You can’t get a clear consensus from the experts. There’s some very funny business going on with Jamie’s roasties; Nigella seems to think 2.5kg is enough for up to 16 people which, unless my family is particularly greedy (highly likely), simply isn’t.
About 10kg of potatoes and two litres of fat later, I have the answer. I also have a minor peeling injury and smell like a chip shop.
Let’s dive in.
How to make the perfect roast potatoes
How you cut your potatoes once you’ve picked a variety is another matter altogether. Photo / 123rf
Vivaldi, Desiree, Maris, King Edward, Red Lady ... Of every variable in the Great Roast Potato Recipe Test, I found the variety to be the least important element.
Maris Pipers and King Edwards yield almost identical results. Red Ladies, Desirees and Vivaldis give a slightly more buttery, velvety texture and, on balance, I’d pick one of the latter on that basis.
How you cut your potatoes once you’ve picked a variety is another matter altogether.
I’m ashamed to say I’d never given much thought to how I cut my roast potatoes until this experiment. I knew I liked lots of angles; I knew the piddly little ones in the bag are actually very handy for getting a couple of smaller potatoes in among the big jobs.
Why do you want a few tiny ones in the mix? Because once cooked they are all crunch. They barely have any fluff inside; they’ve become so saturated with fat they’ve turned to little crisp, translucent shards of heaven.
I tested three different chunk styles – halved, quartered and what should be known as “the Nigella technique”: triangles. The quartered potatoes were lovely and crisp but lacked interior fluff. The halved ones had barely any crunch – there simply aren’t enough edges on a halved potato.
The winner? Triangles. Cutting them this way gives you tight angles. Do as the Queen says and “cut each one into three by cutting off each end at a slant so that you are left with a wedge or triangle in the middle”.
To chuff or not to chuff
I can save you a lot of time here. The answer is: chuff (ie knock them about for a textured finish).
But more specifically, should you steam or boil? How long for? What happens between the parboil and the oven? What’s your chuffing technique? On these matters, people are divided.
Delia advocates steaming, Nigella and Jamie like a parboil beginning with cold, salted water. I’d agree, particularly as it allows you to season the potatoes at this stage of proceedings. This is where Jamie’s recipe goes off the deep end though. He’d like you to chuff the potatoes in a colander, with “a few light shakes”, then spread them out in your roasting tin with the fat, cover and pop in the fridge overnight. You’ll roast them in a hot oven the following day.
I am fundamentally opposed to waiting 24 hours for a roast potato and have always found the best way to ensure a good crunch is to introduce a lukewarm potato to piping (and I mean PIPING) hot fat. I am intrigued by the colander technique though. If nothing else, it sounds less messy than shaking the pan.
Well, less messy it might be, but a good chuff it does not achieve. As for the unchuffed tatty, granted it’ll give you nice, neat crunchy sides if that’s your thing, but they lack the knobbled gnarl and charm of a properly chuffed spud.
The pan technique reigns supreme as the best way to ensure maximum crunch. I’ve got cook time down to 18 minutes from cold water to perfectly parboiled, but times may vary depending on your hob and how crowded your pan is. Then it’s into a colander to steam dry and cool down a bit before returning to the pan for a good shake. Then straight into very hot fat, bailing oil over each potato.
Do you need to coat your potatoes in anything to boost the crunch? Photo / 123rf
The perfect crunch
This might be the most controversial element of the roast potato debate, the chief question being: do you need to coat your potatoes in anything to boost the crunch, or is it all in the cooking technique?
Nadiya Hussain puts baking powder on hers; Nigella and Mary Berry toss theirs in semolina; others opt for a coating of plain flour or cornflour. A dredging of some sort of coating sounds like a very good idea.
If crunch is your North Star goal, I can understand the temptation to increase your chances of reaching it by any means necessary. And when there are other things roasting at the same time – moist things like roast chickens or dishes of cauliflower cheese – you don’t want to risk an anaemic potato. I’m afraid, though, that on closer investigation an undusted potato wins comfortably.
I tried cooking with semolina, flour, and nothing at all, and there was simply no contest.
Semolina gets you a potato that is strangely gritty, and introduces an (albeit subtle) extra flavour, which you just don’t need. Flour makes the crust chewy and gives the potato a cloudy finish rather than that all important gloss that you want from a perfect roast potato.
Fats and flavourings
Let’s get the question of extra flavourings out of the way first. Put simply, a good roast potato doesn’t need any.
I’ve tried rosemary in the parboiling water, garlic in the roasting tray. I didn’t try Trevor’s cumin suggestion but I’ll take his word for it. Jamie wants me to add sage halfway through the cook time and I simply refuse. Adding herbs to a roast potato is gilding the lily. Keep it simple; prioritise the potato. I may get that printed on a T-shirt.
Now for the best fat. I thought I knew the answer to this question. Goose. It’s obviously goose. It’s why Christmas roast potatoes are the best roast potatoes. That deeply savoury goosey flavour can’t be beaten. Well, let me admit I was wrong.
The truth is, animal fat is always going to bring great flavour. Whether goose, duck, or dripping, they are all going to taste glorious.
On a Christmas plate piled high with at least four items too many and a whole mess of flavours, a goosey potato is a welcome bedfellow. But with a classic Sunday roast, I’ve come to the conclusion that you really just want the potato to taste purely of potato. For that reason alone, I’m relegating animal fat.
I tested batches of olive oil (Jamie’s preference – in fact he also uses butter and goose fat), sunflower oil (Mary Berry’s fat of choice), and goose.
My findings? Olive oil is simply not an appropriate fat for a roast potato. If you’re chopping potatoes into wedges, forgoing the parboil and giving them 40 minutes in the oven at 200C, then olive is fine. But you should be under no illusions you have made a proper roast potato.
The smoking point with olive is far too low to be able to withstand the temperature you need the fat to reach. It’ll get you a lovely crunch and undeniably the best colour, but the oil itself will have burnt, leaving your potatoes a little bitter.
You also, I think, need to roast them in a good deal of fat. I’m talking at least a centimetre of oil in the base of the tray. Olive oil is expensive and using this much feels pretty wasteful.
Goose, as discussed, tastes lovely but is simply too goosey. It also, interestingly, takes the potatoes a while longer to get a good crunch on them. I roasted all batches at 200C for 50 minutes, and the goosey ones needed 10 minutes longer.
The winner? Common or garden sunflower. The flavour? Perfectly potatoey. The fluff? Buttery soft. The crunch? Immaculate. It’s a guaranteed banger.
