Heston Blumenthal shares tips for making crispy roast potatoes

Roast potatoes may seem like an easy thing to cook, but making sure they do not break down and come soggy is not always simple to get right.

Professional chef Heston Blumenthal has shared his secret to making the crispiest roast potatoes and it involves how long to boil them and also infusing the water with special ingredients before you place them in the oven.

It is important to strike a balance when cooking roast potatoes as they need to boil for as long as possible in order to prepare them, but if overcooked it can cause them to become much too mushy to perfectly crisp.

In a video online, Heston explained: “It’s very important to take them as far as possible. The problem with that is if you take them literally seconds too far then you’re going to end up with potato soup.”

Thankfully, Heston has revealed his easy recipe for creating crunchy golden roast potatoes which means anyone can make professional-level roasties even if they don’t have lots of booking experience.

How to make Heston Blumenthal’s crispy roast potatoes 

Ingredients 

• Potatoes
• Peeled garlic
• Rosemary
• Salt
• Olive oil

Kitchen equipment: 

• Oven and stove-proof tray
• Large pot
• Colander

Instructions 

To begin, you will need to peel and cut the potatoes. Make sure to save the potato skins as they will be important for later. Heston said: “The most important thing here is to make sure you get enough edges. These are the bits which are going to become really crispy.”

Once the potatoes have been cut, place them in a bowl and leave them under running water for a few minutes in order to wash the starch off.

Next place the potatoes in a pot and cover them with water until they are fully covered. Place the pot on the stove and let them shimmer for around 20 minutes.

Now, Heston has revealed that his secret for making his potatoes much more flavourful is to take the leftover potato skins and place them in the pot while the potatoes are cooking. He said: “I’ve infused the water with the skins from the potatoes, something that you normally throw away when you’re making roast potatoes. However, the skins have so much flavour, and I want that flavour to go back into the potatoes.”

When boiling the roast potatoes, you want to cook them to the point the potato edges have begun to break up. Heston explained: “ Don’t worry, all of the broken surface is going to board the ore while the potatoes are roasting and that’s going to make the crust really juicy.”

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Any small little bits of potatoes should also be kept for roasting. Heston said: “We want those in the oven as well because they’re going to give up beautiful nuggets of really crisp roast potatoes.”

Next, it is time to drain the potatoes in a colander and give them a slight shake to rough up the edges, which will make them even crispier.

Leave them in the colander to cool for around 10 minutes to let the steam evaporate and the potatoes dry out.

Then, take a heatproof tray, and some olive oil and heat up the tray for around 10 minutes while the potatoes are cooking until the tray is very hot.

Place the potatoes on the tray and use a spoon to make sure they are totally covered in the hot oil.

Place the oven at 190 Celsius and slowly roast the potatoes for around an hour. Ten minutes before the potatoes are done cooking, add your rosemary and garlic to get the most flavour out of the potatoes.

Heston said: “I’ve got some garlic and rosemary to add to them but I don’t want to stick it in until about 10 minutes before the end, otherwise, it is going to destroy all the fresh rosemary flavour.”

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