The defining aspect of any roast dinner is the potatoes. A well roasted and seasoned potato is a thing of beauty and can elevate a plate of veggies to greatness by its presence. If you’re new to veganism or an old hand at it, the roast potato should be in your Bat-belt of staple makes. The three key elements here are potato choice, amount of oil and oven temperature.
King Edward potatoes make the best roasties, this is a fact. Maris Piper are also good but get King Edwards if you can.
Traditionally roast potatoes are cooked in a bucket of oil heated up to smoking point in a high sided roasting dish. This isn’t at all necessary, you don’t need to heat up a tray full of oil to make roast potatoes! Heating up a splash in the oven on the tray and covering the potatoes before they go in is the key here. You can seriously reduce your oil content by doing this.
The oven tray is super important, use a shallow sided, flat oven tray. The thing that crisps the spuds up is the hot air flow gently exciting the oil, using a flat tray gives the most air flow to oiled potato ratio.
Roast potatoes take 40 minutes to cook. That’s 20 minutes, turn then 20 minutes. That’s it, it’s really easy!
Everyone has their own special tricks for the perfect roasties, here are ours x
Equipment
- Steamer
- Shallow sided oven tray
Ingredients
- 1 kg King Edward (or any white potatoes)
- 3-5 tbsp Sunflower or other neutral oil
- 1 sprinkle salt
Instructions
- Heat up your oven to 180°C/350°F (fan assisted) or 200°C/390°F (regular).
- Peel your potatoes.
- Now slice them to create even pieces approx 2"/5cm across.
- Pop them all in to the steamer and steam for 10/15 mins (or boil in a pan of salted water) until the outer surface is soft but the inner potato is still a little firm.
- With the lid on, shake the potatoes in the steamer / pan until the outer surface has broken up and they look all fluffy. Be careful not to shake them to the point of making mash potatoes, we're looking for an outer fluff not total obliteration! Having said that, the more fluff, the more crunch when they're roasted so find your happy place twix the two.
- Add the oil to a large, shallow oven tray and place in the oven. Leave to heat up for 10 mins.
- Take out your baking tray and pour the potatoes on to it, they should sizzle.
- Spread them out evenly and allow space in between each potato.
- Sprinkle with salt.
- Roast for 45 minutes, turning over halfway through.
- Perfect roast potatoes!
