How to roast the perfect potatoes for Christmas

SussexWorld

Senior sous chef Ollie Joell at Farmer, Butcher, Chef restaurant at Goodwood Hotel, near Chichester, West Sussex, explains how to prepare the perfect roast potatoes.

Transcript

00:00 Ollie, your roast potatoes are absolutely amazing. Can you share the secret with

00:06 everyone watching this film because they will be preparing their Christmas

00:10 roasties very soon. What do they need to do to make them as special as yours?

00:15 Firstly, I'd get a large potato. I'd say Maris Piper is a really good, quite

00:22 high in starch which is what you need for a roast potato, you want that crispiness.

00:25 Peel them really well, make sure there's no black spots. Cut them

00:30 into quarters and you want the quarters to be all the same size really to keep

00:33 the cook even. Then I would get some water on and bring it up to a simmer

00:37 so sort of around 60 degrees and add herbs so rosemary, thyme, garlic. At 60

00:43 degrees that infusion happens so you get this nice infusion of this

00:47 rosemary, thyme and garlic through the cooking of the potatoes from the first off.

00:51 Don't forget to add a large amount of salt which is crucial. Then add your

00:55 potatoes in and bring it up just to a rolling boil. As it comes up to a rolling

01:00 boil I turn mine off or a very low heat depending on how many you've got. If you've

01:04 got a lot probably a low heat because it will lose the heat a lot quicker.

01:09 You keep it a low heat or a no heat and you poach it and what that does is

01:13 the outsides have this hard hit of heat and then the insides are going to be

01:17 slowly cooked because you want them to be just about holding together but not

01:21 falling apart. It's like that perfect balance between the both being

01:25 overcooked but being just perfect. You take them out and you let the

01:29 steam come off them which dries them out, which the starch activates and it sort of

01:34 dries out. You put them into a colander and ruffle them up. For us we heat

01:40 up our own Goodwood beef fat which we infuse once again with rosemary, thyme

01:44 and garlic and we pour it over the ruffled up potatoes in the tray. 180

01:50 degrees and 15 minute intervals you just turn them, keep turning, keep turning for

01:55 about up until maybe about an hour, an hour and a half mark depending on the

01:58 size of your potatoes. You want a nice golden brown colour and then

02:03 you and then what we do is we have our own Goodwood beef salt that we make

02:08 from our own beef fats. We run it down the beef fat, put the salt on it and

02:12 just mix it together and it enhances that flavour of the beef fat cooked in the

02:15 roasties. Give it a season and then we just add the final loaf of aromatics again,

02:21 rosemary, thyme and garlic for that last 15 minutes and it just finishes them off.

02:24 And that's literally it. It's simple once you know the correct way of doing it

02:29 but the finished product is outstanding. Well it was outstanding. Just to clarify

02:35 for people, so I've got four large Marist Piper potatoes, I've cut them into

02:40 quarters so I've got 16 quarters there. How long are they going to be in the

02:43 water in phase one of this? I'd say depending on the size, so the

02:49 ones that we have we cut quite large because I think that's crucial as well.

02:52 You want them cut as large as you can so the larger the potatoes the better.

02:56 It used between us, I'd say between start to finish from going with the water

03:01 coming out probably half an hour. So quite long? Yeah, yeah definitely but then it's

03:06 how quick you turn down that heat. You want to turn down that heat and as soon as it

03:09 comes up because the water will stay hot but you won't boil them so

03:15 much that will just fall apart. You want to find that perfect medium and just

03:19 don't be afraid to just keep paying attention. I know it's only boiling potatoes

03:22 but pay attention to every single process that you do and you know the

03:26 product speaks for itself really. Brilliant, thanks Ollie.

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