Patatas Bravas Will Be One Of The Best Ways You've Ever Had Potato

Delish

This patatas bravas recipe features fried potatoes with smoky tomato sauce and alioli... what could go wrong?

Transcript

00:00 What's happening, everybody?

00:01 It's Justin here in the Delish Kitchen studios.

00:04 If you've heard of Spanish food,

00:06 it's probably because you've heard of tapas.

00:09 And if you've heard of tapas,

00:10 probably the only one or the most popular one

00:13 that you've had is called batatas bravas.

00:15 That's right.

00:16 They're the little golden, crispity,

00:18 beautiful potato nubbins that's covered

00:21 with like a little spicy sauce

00:23 and some mayo-y deliciousness.

00:25 They're super simple.

00:26 There's a reason why they're in basically

00:27 every tapas bar in Spain or anywhere

00:30 because they're a classic and they're delicious

00:31 and they're super easy to use.

00:33 I really think that this is gonna become

00:34 one of your favorite applications of potatoes

00:37 once you learn how to make them.

00:38 Let's get started.

00:39 (upbeat music)

00:42 For this recipe, we are gonna be using

00:43 your standard Idaho russet potato.

00:47 As you've heard from many people, probably even me,

00:49 the Idaho russet is such a spectacular frying potato.

00:52 It gets that like fluffy, pillowy inside

00:55 and gets a really amazing caramelization,

00:57 golden, beautiful outside, nice and crisp.

00:59 It is the go-to frying potato here in the States,

01:02 so we're gonna use them.

01:03 We're not gonna peel them.

01:04 We're gonna go right in.

01:04 We're gonna chop them.

01:05 We're gonna chop them into pieces

01:06 that are sort of like that perfect breakfast potato size.

01:10 I have some water coming to the boil

01:12 'cause we are going to par-cook these potatoes in

01:15 as I'm doing it, heavily salted water.

01:18 We're gonna go in to this with our potatoes

01:21 once it comes to a boil

01:22 and they're not gonna cook until they're totally done.

01:23 We just want them just past raw.

01:26 So we're gonna cook them for about six to eight minutes.

01:29 Then we're gonna get them out,

01:30 strain and put them on a sheet tray

01:32 so they can cool rather quickly.

01:34 Go the extra mile, spread them all out

01:36 so we can get as much moisture off these as possible.

01:39 There are usually two sauces

01:41 that are added to these potatoes

01:44 and we are going to make the first one,

01:45 which is the Brava sauce, the titular sauce.

01:49 It is a like spicy sauce.

01:51 It's like what old timey cooks would call

01:53 like a piquant sauce, like P-I-Q-U-A-N-T,

01:57 which was like fancy speak for like, it's kind of spicy.

02:02 And that's the reason why it's only kind of spicy

02:04 is because all of the heat is coming from paprika.

02:07 Paprika is an enormously popular

02:09 and well-used spice in Spain.

02:11 We're using three different types.

02:12 We're gonna be using sweet, hot, and smoked.

02:16 That's to sort of mimic the types of paprika

02:18 you're gonna get in Spain.

02:19 All those combined with like,

02:21 if you're using like classic American distinctions

02:24 of paprika will get you close

02:26 to that Spanish paprika flavor.

02:28 The last thing is this sherry vinegar.

02:30 That's like, you could literally,

02:31 even this bottle is said in Spanish,

02:33 vinagre de Jerez.

02:35 That's sherry wine vinegar.

02:36 It's slightly different,

02:37 but if you absolutely can't find it,

02:39 it's most similar to like a red wine vinegar

02:43 or a white wine vinegar.

02:43 You could like combine equal parts

02:45 and that'll get you pretty close.

02:46 You could just put the dried spices

02:49 into cooking tomato sauce and that would be fine.

02:51 But as you do with most spices,

02:53 although some people might even not think to do this

02:55 with powdered dried spices,

02:56 is you wanna toast or bloom the spices.

02:59 So we're gonna cook these off in a little bit of fat.

03:01 So in my little skillet,

03:02 I'm gonna add some olive oil

03:03 and I'm gonna add all three paprikas,

03:05 the hot, smoked, and the sweet.

03:07 And we're just gonna let that cook

03:08 for like 30 seconds to a minute.

03:09 This can burn relatively quickly.

03:11 You wanna move it around.

03:12 You're gonna have your whole kitchen smelling like pepper.

03:14 It's gonna smell amazing.

03:16 Once it's super fragrant,

03:18 should really only take about 15, 30 seconds.

03:20 You're gonna go right in with some tomato sauce,

03:23 a little bit of low sodium chicken stock,

03:25 and a tiny bit of sherry vinegar.

03:27 Then we're gonna stir everything together,

03:29 let it reduce just slightly,

03:30 let those flavors melt together,

03:32 add a little bit of salt.

03:33 This is sort of what you're looking for.

03:35 You're looking for this like brick red color,

03:37 almost if you took tomato sauce and caramelized it

03:40 and reduced it just a little bit till it was darker.

03:41 That's the texture and color you're looking for.

03:44 It smells amazing, blooming spices like that is amazing.

03:47 So I'm gonna set this aside

03:48 and we can get started on our other sauce.

03:50 You've probably heard of aioli, garlic aioli,

03:52 chipotle aioli.

03:54 I gotta be honest with you.

03:55 It's basically just a very fancy way of saying mayo.

03:58 Nowadays, we're making an aioli today,

04:00 but in Spain it's called alioli.

04:02 So to make the alioli,

04:03 it's basically a similar process

04:04 as it would be to making any type of mayonnaise.

04:06 We're gonna start in a bowl with some egg yolks,

04:10 some Dijon mustard, a bit of lemon juice,

04:13 and then crucially to make it alioli,

04:14 we need to add garlic.

04:15 And some people will chop their garlic.

04:17 And I think even this recipe says to,

04:19 but I like to grate my garlic for applications like this.

04:22 It's like a harsher way of breaking down the garlic

04:24 that kind of activates that like sharp flavor in garlic,

04:28 which is, believe it or not,

04:29 what I'm looking for in alioli.

04:30 It's not necessarily what I'm looking for

04:31 in every dish that has garlic in it,

04:32 but it is what I'm looking for in this.

04:34 So I'm gonna grate in a garlic clove

04:35 and then I'm gonna start whisking.

04:37 First to combine everything that's in the bowl.

04:38 And then I'm gonna slowly be streaming in oil.

04:41 I'm doing like a two-prong technique

04:44 of keeping a very steady stream

04:46 by keeping my hand kind of high.

04:48 And then with my right hand, I'm not whisking in circles.

04:51 I'm almost doing like a figure eight,

04:53 back and forth, back and forth,

04:54 hitting like four corners of the bowl

04:57 or like eight corners of the bowl,

04:58 however you wanna hear it.

04:59 And honestly, like your arm is gonna get tired.

05:03 And as long as your emotion isn't broken,

05:04 you can take a break.

05:06 It's not gonna just break just sitting here.

05:07 As long as the emotion is still happening,

05:09 you can take a break, let your arm air out.

05:11 And then get right back in it to finish it off.

05:14 You're sort of looking for like a ranch dressing

05:17 type texture.

05:17 It shouldn't be as set as like an American mayonnaise.

05:20 So I'm gonna season with a bit of salt,

05:23 mix that on in there.

05:25 And we can set this aside with our Brava sauce.

05:27 And then we can really get to frying.

05:30 There's a myth that olive oil

05:31 has this like exceptionally low smoke point.

05:34 And it is true that it does have a lower smoke point

05:37 than most oils, but that smoke point is like 425 degrees,

05:40 way higher than like anybody would ever want

05:44 to deep fry at.

05:45 So if you've heard like you can never deep fry in olive oil,

05:48 that's incorrect.

05:50 It is expensive.

05:51 Olive oil is far more expensive than other oils.

05:53 And like the reason that the Spanish tend to get away

05:56 with frying an oil, is they reuse that oil a lot.

05:58 When I lived in Spain, my host mother had like a kettle

06:02 of oil that she would like pour right back into

06:04 that had a strainer that was part of it.

06:06 It was a really cool contraption.

06:07 They're using less expensive olive oil also.

06:10 It's not like the stuff that you drizzle

06:11 on olives or bread.

06:13 But we're gonna be using oil to fry today.

06:16 And we wanna bring it to a temperature of 360,

06:18 well below the smoke point.

06:20 It's still gonna be delicious, not acrid.

06:21 And we're gonna fry them up.

06:22 It's gonna take six to eight minutes.

06:24 You can mix it around with a spider or a spat,

06:26 just making sure that all the sides are being covered.

06:29 Once those are done,

06:30 remove them to a paper towel lined plate,

06:32 season them immediately with salt.

06:33 That salt's gonna adhere to the hot oil.

06:36 How you will often see these potatoes

06:38 is with like perfect little squiggles of sauce

06:41 going over your potatoes.

06:42 So I'm gonna transfer both of my sauces to a squeeze bottle

06:45 and I'm gonna get those beautiful lines.

06:47 It's gonna be gorgeous.

06:49 Holding this plate, looking at this brings me back

06:52 to when I was living in Spain.

06:53 I feel like a macero in Barcelona.

06:57 Who's about to drop your tapa onto your plate

07:00 with your drink.

07:01 You're getting your free tapa placed in front of you.

07:04 And now it is time to take your little toothpick

07:06 and dig in.

07:08 You could just have the one sauce

07:09 and then they go the extra bit further to understand that

07:12 you need to balance out that rich, fruity,

07:14 earthy, smoky flavor from the brava sauce.

07:17 You have to add that bright kind of bite of the alioli.

07:21 That balance, that squiggle of sauce of each kind

07:24 on every potato is exactly what you need.

07:27 There is something magical also about like frying food

07:30 in olive oil.

07:31 It feels very decadent.

07:32 I mean, they fry their food in olive oil

07:34 'cause their olive oil is as cheap as vegetable oil for us.

07:36 But when we do it here, it feels a little expensive.

07:39 And because we par-cooked those potatoes,

07:41 they are perfectly fluffy on the inside.

07:43 They have a nice crispity crunch on the outside.

07:45 This is like ultimate party food, ultimate game night food.

07:49 So you want more inspiration for little bites

07:52 just like this, stick around here on delish.com.

07:54 (upbeat music)

07:57 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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