Roasted Smashed Potatoes – Food Wishes

hello this is chef john from food wishes dot-com with roasted smashed potatoes that's right we're gonna smash and then roast potatoes which will create something gorgeous and appearance that features the ultimate in potato recipe texture the proverbial crispy and crunchy on the outside and yet soft and fluffy in the middle and please do not confuse these with the other thing people call smashed potatoes which are just mashed potatoes where people were too lazy to peel the skins off alright I'm not a big fan of those unlike these which I'm a huge fan of and what we'll need to get started is some medium sized Yukon Gold or in my case yellowfin potatoes which of course we've watched carefully because we're gonna eat this gun's and what we'll do is add them to this pot along with some nice cold fresh water and we will place those over high heat and also add a fairly generous amount of salt alright that's about a third of a cup of kosher salt two about three quarts of water which might seem like a lot to people that just add a pinch but that really is one of the keys here and then what we'll do once this comes up to a simmer is lower the heat to about medium-low and let these simmer gently until they're tender and other than giving them the occasional stir there's really not much else to do except wait for these to cook to the perfect doneness which is just tender and of course we will test those with a small sharp knife and while we definitely don't want these super soft and falling apart we also don't want them undercooked and still firm otherwise we're gonna have issues when we try to smash these and the last thing you want when you're smashing something is issues so like I said we will go until these are just tender at which point we'll drain them very well and then as soon as they're cool enough to handle or before well go ahead and transfer them onto a sheet pan which will allow them to cool a lot faster alright because we want these to cool all the way down to room temp before we refrigerate them and while we're waiting for that to happen I'd like to do one optional step which is go around the side of each potato with a sharp knife making very shallow cuts through the skin like an eighth of an inch deep all right maybe like four or five on each potato and the reason I like to do this is because potato skins are very tough and sometimes when you smash them all this skin will sort of stay together on one side and all the fluffy potato from the inside will kind of smoosh out the other side so by making these cuts once these are smashed that skin will split a little more uniformly and will hopefully have the same amount of skin all the way around right so that's my thought process here and it may or may not make any huge difference but regardless once those potatoes of room temp we'll go ahead and pop them in the fridge until thoroughly thoroughly chilled okay overnight is best but they must be totally cold before we smash them and roast em and then the only other thing we're gonna have to prep here is our garlic herb butter which will do by melting a stick of butter over medium heat along with some fresh rosemary and thyme and a whole bunch of thickly sliced garlic and by the way you can use chopped if you want but we're actually gonna use that sliced garlic as a garnish later and I think it's gonna look a lot nicer if we do it like this and then all we're gonna do here is cook this stirring until that garlic just starts to turn translucent and softens up okay we are gonna cook it a little more later but for this stage all we're doing is infusing the butter with this garlic and herb and the garlic shouldn't really take on any color at this point so what we'll do when it looks like this is simply turn off the heat and reserve until needed and then once that's set we can pull our cold potatoes out of the fridge and get to smash in but before that what we'll do is prep a pan which as you can see I've lined with a Silpat and we'll go ahead and generously butter that all over as in very very generously and by the way I should mention that these will cook and get crispy or faster if you just use a bare metal pan or a foil pan all right so this setup will take a little longer but the advantage is you don't have to flip them halfway through the roasting but anyway once that set we can pull our cold potatoes out of the fridge and get to Smashing which I like to do between some plastic using some type of flat heavy object and I got a little excited on this first one and did it too thin but that's okay as long as it doesn't fall apart it'll still work so we'll want to do the next one a little thicker but anyway one smash we'll go ahead and season the top with salt pepper and cayenne and I carefully flip it over and do the same to the other side at which point we will transfer that onto our pan and please note for filming purposes I'm only doing one pan here but in real life you'll probably use a couple pans making sure to spread them out nice and evenly so they're not overlapping alright so let's try that again only this time we won't smash it quite as then okay I'd say about a half-inch thick is perfect and by the way some people like to do these all once by pressing down on the top with another sheet pan but personally I prefer to do them one at a time and not just because I'm paid by the hour all right I think we have a little more control plus these only take a few seconds anyway and we can make sure they're seasoned properly but anyway if you want to do them all once go ahead I mean you are for all the Steve Nash of how you smash and then what we'll do once our potatoes have been smashed seasoned damp and let's go ahead and drizzle on and brush over a ton of our garlic infused butter all right don't be shy we want a lot of butter so these get nice and crispy and crusty and that's it once these have been severely buttered we'll go ahead and maybe sprinkle a little more seasoning over the top if we feel the need at which point these are ready to transfer into the center of a 450 degree oven for about 35 to 45 minutes or until very well browned and extremely crusty and while we're waiting what we can do is put that garlic in there back on the stove over like medium-low heat and cook it until those garlic cloves start to caramelize and turn a nice light shade of golden brown okay we don't want to go too dark so I'm gonna turn off the heat when they look a little something like this and then what we'll do once our potatoes are done is spoon this garlic over the top to create a beautiful and extremely delicious garnish so this step is optional but also mandatory and that's it once our potatoes have cooked long enough we'll go ahead and pull them out and not only should they look stunningly beautiful they should sound very crispy and crunchy oh yeah Fork don't lie and if everything's gone according to plan the bottom should be just as crusty and browned as the tops and we'll go ahead and serve immediately transferring those on to some kind of warm platter at which point we'll go ahead and spoon over those soft and sweet garlic slices or garlic confit if you like things that sound French and that's it once garlic I went ahead and finish off with some freshly snipped chives and that my friends is just an amazing possibly perfect platter of potatoes whether you serve those as is or the side of sour cream and chives like I'm doing here and I think one reason I love this technique so much is that it's sort of like eating all my favorite potato recipes at once okay with that beautiful buttery crusty exterior surrounding that soft light fluffy interior it's sort of like home fries meets mashed potatoes meets french fries meets potato pancakes only better and of course herb infused butter along with soft sweet sticky slices of garlic don't hurt either and if you're thinking sure that looks delicious on that plate all by itself but what it also worked next to some roasted turkey smothered in gravy well yes yes it will it will work very well and by the way that turkey our scene was a little bit of an experiment I did cooking a turkey upside down very quickly in a very hot oven ok believe it or not I cooked like a 16 pound bird in just about two hours and it actually came out surprisingly nice so stay tuned for that little adventure but in the meantime I really do hope you give these amazing roasted smashed potatoes a try soon so please follow the links below to get the ingredient amounts a printable written recipe in much more info as usual and as always and you you

Channel: Food Wishes

Views: 740,255

Rating: 4.9551554 out of 5

Keywords: Roasted, Smashed, Potatoes, side, dish, potato, chef, john, food, wishes, holiday, thanksgiving, recipe

Id: KP9Xg92ckI4

Length: 8min 27sec (507 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 19 2019