I’ve been trying to master roast potatoes for well over a decade. It has been a slow and painful road to eat over-cooked, over-boiled, burnt, under-done or just yucky roast potatoes. I’ve eaten my fair share of delicious roast potatoes – mainly in London at places like Heston Blumenthal’s ‘The Hinds Head‘ in Bray, Roast perched above the Borough Market, Prince of Wales in our old Putney neighborhood, and The Sand’s End in southwest London.

Yes – you read that right.

All of my favorite roast potatoes came from a different continent all the way across the Atlantic Ocean. No wonder I’d been so saddened by my attempts to make roast potatoes with recipes from American chefs. No offense to American chefs, but none of the recipes hit that magic spot for my taste buds.

I was tired of eating and serving less than stellar roast potatoes. I and my guests deserve better.

How do I make them better? Well – I’d been looking in cookbooks and corners of the web… Then after a reminder from my friend Paul Nelmes I remembered watching a Heston Blumenthal video on Channel 4 for the perfect roast potatoes and a couple keystrokes in to the magic Google machine and I found the starting point for re-building a recipe for my favorite recipe of roast potatoes.

What makes these roast potatoes so special? 2 simple things – yes really that is it.

1. The right potatoes
2. Hot oil

No joke – it can be that simple.

Now to the recipe…

Ingredients

• Potatoes (preferably Maris Piper, but Yukon gold are a good backup)
• Butter
• Olive oil
• Salt
• Pepper

Directions

1. Put the water on the stove to boil
2. Quarter the potatoes (the more edges the better – that’s where the crispy bits come from)
3. Boil potatoes for ~20 minutes – get them soft on the edges
4. Pour some olive oil in a roasting pan or sheet pan
5. Preheat the stove and oil to 375° while the potatoes boil
6. Take the potatoes off the boil and strain
7. Rough up the potatoes in the colander so there are even more craggy edges 
8. Salt and pepper the potatoes 
9. Put potatoes and butter in the pan with hot oil (butter in too soon and it’ll burn – yuck!)
10. Bake potatoes for 45 minutes – turning every 15 minutes to make them crispy on all sides
11. Remove and enjoy (give them a few minutes before eating or you’ll burn yourself – no joke!)

There you have it. My best roast potatoes and they really don’t take that much effort.

Hope you enjoy!