How to Make Super Crispy Patatas Bravas

[Music] when I first met my husband Ian he asked me what my favorite ingredient was and I immediately said potatoes then he laughed and thought I was kidding but that was the truth potatoes are one of my all-time favorite foods so when I tried this recipe for Spanish style potatoes my mind was blown these are some of the best potatoes I've ever had so patatas bravas is probably the most popular tapas dish right you go to any tapas restaurant they're gonna have them and the reason is they're really really good fried potatoes who doesn't like that right it's very good so I'm gonna start with the potatoes is a russet potato Oh perfect one for this recipe they're very high in starch and they're very dry so they cook up really fluffy inside we're using two and a quarter pounds of russet potatoes they're normally double fried it accomplishes two things on the first low fry you get basically the potatoes cooked through really gently then you take them out and you increase the temperature of the oil so you get really nice browning on the second fry we wanted to mimic that in some ways and we're using a really different technique this is 8 cups boiling water and we're gonna add to it 1/2 a teaspoon of baking soda which is a bit of an odd ingredient throw into boiling water but it serves a really good function okay so now I'm gonna add the baking soda thumbs up a little bit oh look at that and then I'm gonna add my potatoes right in so that's a lot of potatoes for this much water temperatures gonna drop a little bit it takes a little while for it to come back up but once we're at a boil we're gonna go for a minute know just enough to get that outside kind of mushy so let's talk about why we boil the potatoes with a little baking soda for just one minute the baking soda with its high pH breaks down the pectin causing the cells to leak and release starch but only on the exterior of the potatoes because of the short cooking time this starts you layer on the outside of the potatoes is what eventually turns into that golden crisp crust step patatas bravas are known for all right so Julia this has been about a minute of boiling so we've just got that exterior done so I'm gonna turn off and it's time to drain so I'm gonna put the potatoes back in the pot on the burner and what we want to do is dry them out a little bit you know if you have a wet food and you try to fry it it doesn't Brown very rapidly so this step I have them over low heat for just 30 seconds a little bit of stirring and will drive off that excess moisture okay so now that the potatoes are off the heat I'm gonna add the salt I have one and a half teaspoons of kosher salt obviously it's gonna season them it's also axes and abrasive so the salts almost acting like a little bit of a sandpaper roughing up the exterior of the potatoes all right so that's about 30 seconds there you see they're nice and pacing so I'm going to turn off the heat and we're gonna transfer them to this baking sheet here so you can see a lot of steam coming out so we're gonna get lots of evaporation they're gonna dry even more so they fry better down the line we can let them sit here for up to two hours and cool those potatoes have been cooling now it's time to shift over and make the sauce oh and my other favorite thing about patatas bravas is there's actually two sauces classically with it a spicy tomato sauce and that's actually where the name patatas bravas comes from bravas meaning fierce or angry so it's a spicy tomato sauce and the other one is in allioli which is not totally on similar to a mayonnaise but it has a garlic paste as the emulsifier so if you just mix in oil it's a little bit of tough thing to make so we're actually gonna go with store-bought mayonnaise we're gonna use garlic paste because we want this sauce to be really smooth and a quick way to do that is actually using a microplane it's a rasp grater so I grab it with the stem end here cuz I'm gonna kind of leave that on there at the end then I simply just run it down the microplane no I love this trick I do it all the time at home and I also use it for ginger all right so that's great I have a tablespoon of vegetable oil I'm gonna put this over medium low heat then I'm gonna put the garlic in next so I've also got a teaspoon of sweet smoked paprika it's a really important flavor and a lot of Spanish cooking I also have 1/2 teaspoon of kosher salt and then here's the Cayenne so this is where the bravas comes in the spiciness step back it is so you can do 1/2 to 3/4 of a teaspoon we're gonna go crazy we're gonna go 3/4 oh all in right so we're gonna just cook this for about 30 seconds here just kind of balloon the spices oh you can really smell it yeah that sounds good okay so 30 seconds that's nice and aromatic we're good our next ingredient is tomato paste so we wanted to be really smooth it's not chunky you don't want it too chunky tomato product tomato paste is really concentrated not a lot of flavor alright stir that in and another 30 seconds here kind of bloom that flavor as well all right that's great the next step I have a 1/2 cup of water that's gonna thin it out create our sauce and just whisk it in helps to kind of break up the tomato paste which can be kind of okay so I'm gonna bring this up to a boil over high heat but she's gonna happen real fast cuz we've already got the heat on there okay so now it's up to a boil I'm gonna bring it down to medium low and cook for about four to five minutes and really thicken it up okay so it's been four minutes he's getting nice and thick nice and concentrated so that's perfect all right so I'm gonna transfer this to this big bowl over here my final ingredient for this sauce is two teaspoons of sherry vinegar which is a really nice vinegar tons of flavor or whisk that in ringlet is cool completely and then we're gonna finish the sauce up and then it's time to fry the potatoes Julie it's time to fry are you excited I love frying I do too yep and this is gonna be great so we've got three cups of vegetable oil and this is at 375 degrees we're gonna add the potatoes all at once so just bring my pan over get it nice and low in there drop them in we want it to go down on oil because no one likes to fry with a ton of oil yeah so we tried it in one test and they came out really nice and we figured out that it's actually not unsimilar to when we do the double fry method you start with a low temperature and then do a high temperature here the oil drops significantly in temperature so you get really low heat cook them through nice and gently without too much browning then as the temperature climbs they start to brown and crisp so it's gonna take about 20 to 25 minutes they're gonna turn nice and golden-brown in that time and we don't have to take them in and out of the pot a bunch of times so while these are frying we're gonna finish up our sauce over here I've got my cooled sauce I mentioned that alioli before we have that garlic paste mayonnaise so what we're gonna do is actually just use store-bought mayonnaise and I've got a quarter cup of it here the best thing is when these two sauces kind of merge on the plate some basil just doing that ahead of time we're cheating you know I'm all for cheating okay as long as it tastes good right yep oh that would be good on sandwiches in my head right now I'm thinking of all the things like it slather this sauce on and there's a lot it is a lot so if this goes missing in a minute although okay so about 25 minutes and you can take a look and see they're beautiful golden-brown nice and crispy those look gorgeous they look good right you can hear them too how crunchy there against the spider there so I'm going right onto paper towel we could just go into the wire rack but that paper towel is gonna help absorb more of the oil and when they're coming out is really the time when a lot of that oil gets sucked back into the potato so putting them onto paper towel makes a big difference look good huh you look terrific alright so wow they're nice and hot I'm also gonna season them with some salt they have a little bit in the crust you don't need to go too heavy but seasoning right now nice and high up even distribution on their salts gonna stick better while they're hot okay so those are ready now they look amazing they look good right okay so now I'm gonna serve you a few here and I'll give you some sauce mmm swooning potatoes really are my all-time favorite because we use those russets is really nice and fluffy inside yeah there's the texture difference the crunchy on the outside and really creamy on the inside and it tastes like potato because we used russets the sauce is pretty fierce right the sauce would be good on cardboard man this sauce is killer when it's nice because it's spicy from all the cayenne but then the mayonnaise kind of mellows it out a little bit these potatoes are the bomb so for my new favorite potato recipe you start by boiling the potatoes for one minute in water laced with baking soda then after draining cook them in a dry pot with sea salt before finally deep-frying them until they're super golden and crisp so from the Test Kitchen to your kitchen a brand new recipe for patatas bravas you can get this recipe all the recipes from this season along with our tastings testings and selected episodes on our website at America's Test Kitchen calm thanks for watching America's Test Kitchen what you think we'll leave a comment and let us know which recipes you're excited to make or you can just say hello you can find links to today's recipes and reviews in the video description and don't forget to subscribe to our Channel see you later I'll see you later

Channel: America's Test Kitchen

Views: 91,688

Rating: 4.8896437 out of 5

Keywords: patatas bravas, patatas, tapas, how to make patatas bravas, fried potatoes, patatas bravas recipe, potatoes, potato recipes, fried potato recipes, frying, tapas recipes, aioli, garlic aioli, america's test kitchen, americas test kitchen, dan souza

Id: YOO46ztc-hA

Length: 8min 18sec (498 seconds)

Published: Mon May 06 2019