These Are The Best Roasted Potatoes In The World | Epicurious 101

hi I'm Frank Proto I'm a professional chef and color instructor and today I'm going to show you the best way to make roasted potatoes at home we're talking everything you need to know about making roast potatoes crispy on the outside and soft and fluffy in the middle this is roasted potatoes 101. this recipe is not hard it doesn't take a lot of ingredients it doesn't take a lot of special items let's go prep our potatoes the potatoes we're using today are russets russets are a starchy potato that roasts up really well a lot of times when you have french fries they're using russets so these are the ones that get crisp on the outside and soft and fluffy in the middle for the most part I'm peeling these potatoes because I want to par cook them basically the starch is going to gelatinize and we're going to have a nice kind of crust on the outside from that you can do this with the jackets on that's fine but I feel like you get a better crunch if you take the skin off you can see the potatoes long and skinny I usually take the top and the bottom off and then we peel in between so we kind of just do a clean sweep of the potato it shouldn't take more than 10 seconds per potato so I'm going to put this potato in the water not only to kind of wash off the outside but to also keep them from oxidizing you'll see the oxidation pretty much starts fairly quickly it'll start to turn kind of grayish or grayish Brown is it bad at that point no you can peel it again and get all that gray off and then put it in some water you don't want to do it for too long I usually do it for maybe three or four hours if I have to but I wouldn't put these in the fridge overnight so at this point our potatoes in the water they are rinsed off really nice but all that stuff that was on the outside is kind of floating around in my water what I want to do is dump this water out put some fresh water on top to cook the potatoes our potatoes are in clean water and now we're going to cut them into the perfect size so I'm going to take my potato and I'm going to cut it in half now I think that this might be a little too large for one bite but I think this is a great size not only do they cook fairly quickly you have a nice ratio of crunchy outside and soft inside what I found with this method is that I get a good consistent result that's delicious thank you by starting the potatoes out in cold salted water we're going to start the process of cooking the potatoes through so if we don't do this step the outside of the potato is going to be crispy and the inside will be hard and I'm not shy about the salt because it Seasons that outside of the potato so give that a quick stir with your spider once it comes to a boil we're going to lower down to a simmer we don't want this to boil the whole time because what happens is the water is really rough the potatoes kind of hit into each other and they start to break up and fall apart and give off too much starch boiling potatoes can take anywhere between 5 and 15 minutes but for the most part they're in the simmering water for a short amount of time a lot of people will be tempted to get in there and start stirring things up don't just leave it alone let them come up to a boil gently lower them down and then we can get in there and see if they're ready to go or not now the potatoes are boiling I'm going to lower it until it's just a light simmer we see little bubbles here and there we want to get these at the right stage so that they're slightly cooked I'm going to stick my knife in here and you can see that it holds on to the potato it's sliding just slightly the outside is soft you can see when I stick my finger in there I get an indentation and that's what I want also if I get my nail put my nail in it the top layer kind of squeezes off so it's time to take these potatoes out of the water let's shut our water off you could use a colander but I find using one of these spiders is a lot more efficient we want the potatoes to be dry at this point the drier the potato the quicker it Browns you can see that there's steam coming off them which is drying them out as well before we put these into the pan we need them to cool all the way what that does is it allows the starch on the outside to firm up that's going to ensure a nice crispy crust I want that brown crust so I start my potatoes in a cast iron skillet on the stove the reason I choose cast iron is because it holds the heat really well I can tell my pan is ready because I do see a little wisp of smoke coming off of it today's potatoes we're using ghee which is basically just a clarified butter it has good flavor and it has a high smoke point we want to have a high smoke point so our oil does not degrade and give us weird off flavors so chef Frank why don't you just use whole butter if I use whole butter the salads and the whole butter are going to burn before the potatoes are actually cooked with the ghee I'm not shy right I'm going to plop it in there ghee is butter without any solids in it so you shouldn't hear a lot of snap crackle and pop going on it should be just kind of a light little crackle you can see my fat is hot I have a light Haze of smoke that's good I have it on low heat right now I'm going to turn it up just a little before I add my potatoes because when I add the potatoes to the pan it's going to cool the pan off slightly and I don't want that I want to try and maintain temperature I'm going to start with the flat sides you can see as I put them in the pan what's happening I see bubbles bubbles are good bubbles usually mean that the moisture is cooking off and the fat is doing its job by Browning the outside I try not to overcrowd the pan if I put too many potatoes in there we're not going to get a nice even Brown we're going to get kind of a more spotty Brown and they might give off some moisture and stop the Browning process from happening moisture is the enemy of brown crispy goodness at this point my potatoes are bubbling away happily I'm going to turn my heat up just a little bit and I'm going to give them a check right they shouldn't be sticking but they should also be starting to Brown I think it's a good opportunity to put a little seasoning on these right now we'll go with a little bit of salt a little bit of black pepper I go light on the seasoning right now because I like the season throughout the process season throughout the process ensures that we season evenly things aren't salty they just have really good flavor all right let's look at our potatoes I'm starting off some nice Browning on the outside what we're going to do is we're going to turn them now look at how beautiful that is it's starting to get nice and brown right and that's what we want we want the brown to be started and then we can throw these puppies in the oven thank you so now I'm going to take these and put them into a preheated 400 degree oven to continue that beautiful Browning the potatoes are going to be in the oven for about 20 to 25 minutes at about the halfway mark we're going to turn them over so that we ensure we get that nice Golden Crust all the way around so these potatoes are about halfway through and they're ready to flip or turn so you can see what's happening over here we're getting more Brown so I'm gonna give them another turn try them again as brown as we can on all sides smells delicious looks delicious now we can put them back in the oven just to finish cooking potatoes are out of the oven they're crispy and delicious looking what I like to do at this point is take them out of the pan and let them drain on paper towels just to get any excess fat off of them and back in the day when I worked at McDonald's this is what they would use on the fries find Salt basically a popcorn salt and it's called popcorn salt because it's super fine and it sticks to the popcorn if you don't have popcorn salt just get a blender out Blitz up a little regular salt and you'll have a nice fine salt for this it's been a long time since I worked at McDonald's but this is one of those things that stuck with me throughout my culinary career for our final garnish I'm going to add some herbs to these I chose chives and parsley first of all chives have a nice oniony bite and I love that right we'll take a little bit of a parsley and the parsley gives us a lot of freshness right we have that rich butter in there we're gonna have a buttery flavor and the parsley of chives is just going to kind of lift it up and slightly cut it so you take your parsley roll it up and I'm just gonna chop I always add my herbs at the end if you put them in the pan pretty much all the flavor goes away and they burn and they get too dark and they're just little burned bits on your potatoes buttery Herby and delicious and there you have it the best way to make roasted potatoes okay it's time to taste look at how beautiful they look right you can hear that that's crispy on top and that's what we want right so crisp on the outside look how soft and fluffy that is on the inside so let's give it a taste actually it's a little on the creamy side on the inside the outside's got this nice nutty flavor from that ghee so even though there's a couple of extra steps with these it is worth it a hundred percent look at that inside nice and soft if you want to show your Chef skills off to people make them some roasted potatoes simple easy and delicious

Channel: Epicurious

Views: 1,088,438

Keywords: best potato recipe, best roast potato recipe, best roast potatoes, best roasted potatoes, crispy roast potatoes, crispy roast potatoes recipe, crunchy roast potatoes, easy roast potatoes, epi, epicurious, epicurious 101, how to make roast potatoes, how to make roast potatoes in oven, how to make roasted potatoes, oven roasted potatoes, perfect roast potatoes, potato recipe, potatoes, roast potatoes, roasted potatoes, roasted potatoes recipe, the best roasted potatoes

Id: 2ODlojhqZ3U

Length: 8min 31sec (511 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 17 2023