Elevate your Christmas roast potatoes flavour with Ross & Ross Gifts
It's a proven fact that you can never have enough Christmas roast potatoes. However many you lovingly cook, they'll get devoured. Even if a few manage to survive the main event, they'll get squashed cold into a sandwich of delicious leftovers or get given a second crispy lease of life when they are fried up in the Boxing Day bubble and squeak. However, not all roast potatoes are created equal. For the perfect roast potatoes, we have a few tips and tricks to get you started.
5 tricks for crispy roast potatoes
1. How to choose the best potatoes for roasting
The Maris Piper reigns supreme as our favourite potato for crafting your Christmas roast potatoes. They're available almost everywhere, from gourmet greengrocers to your local corner shop, and they're definitely budget friendly. If for some reason you can't get hold of them, any floury potato will make a decent roast spud - try a King Edward, Desiree or a Vivaldi. Avoid waxier varieties like Jersey Royals and Charlotte potatoes. Look for smooth, unblemished potatoes and store them in a cool, dark place until the big day - but not in the fridge.
2. Perfect potato prep
Begin by peeling your potatoes and cutting them into even sized pieces. You won't need to get a ruler out, but by ensuring that they are roughly the same size, you can assume that they'll all cook evenly. Give them a quick rinse to remove any excess starch and then parboil in cold, salted water for seven to ten minutes. The potatoes should be beginning to get soft but still holding their shape really well.
3. Crispy bits are best
Everyone wants to know how to make roast potatoes crispy. Possibly the best tip for easy roast potatoes that impress is to treat them a bit rough. Once you've parboiled your potatoes, give them a good shake in the colander. You're aiming to rough up their edges a little bit - these are the bits that will get crisp and burnished as the potatoes roast in the hot fat. This small step means a huge difference to the finished product, don't skip it!
4. Warm your fat before adding the potatoes
Whether you're using butter, lard, goose fat, our unique Roast Potato Oil or vegetable oil for roast potatoes, it's important to make sure that the fat is hot before adding the parboiled potatoes. This will help seal them, developing a crisp exterior and a pillowy soft inside.
5. Flavour up your spuds
Fancy adding a little something extra to your Christmas roast potatoes this year? About halfway through roasting, we recommend giving them a little shake-up to ensure that they're browning evenly. This is also a great opportunity to add any extra flavours. We recommend trying:
- Garlic and chopped rosemary
- Clementine zest and fresh sage
- Thyme and bay - especially good with goose fat!
Our secret to perfect roasties - Roast Potato Oil
For the perfect roast potatoes, we have formulated our Roast Potato Oil.
Our Roast Potato Oil is an excellent way to give some delicious flavours to sometimes ‘dull roasties’. This oil has a really high smoke point so you can get it really hot and that means really crispy Roast Potatoes. We have infused this glorious oil with background notes of Rosemary, Smoke and Garlic.
We have launched our own original Roast range to help create the tastiest Roast Dinner ever! After some research, we discovered that there was a sense of tiredness with the traditional Roast Dinner. Therefore we have decided to liven up some of the trimmings and classic roast dishes. Our Roast Potato Oil is apart of the Roast Dinner Box, that has recently won the Gift of the Year in the Festive & Occasions category.
