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Perftatoes 2.0

About a year and a half ago, I thought I had the perfect roast potatoes recipe, and I blogged it ("Perfect Roast Potatoes"). After some critical feedback, I've improved the recipe considerably:

These are amazing roast potatoes and very easy to make... they have a creamy texture inside and slightly crispy shells with a robust, but not overpowering, garlic flavor, with whole roast garlic cloves and a hint of citrus. The cornstarch is the secret; it traps water and promotes crispiness, but we only use a little so these aren't hard as rocks. (Leave out the garlic powder at the beginning if you don't want garlic to be as central to the dish.)

Perfect Roast Potatoes

Ingredients:

  • 2 lb. red or russet potatoes, washed, dried and then cut into largish chunks (1/2" - 1" on the side)
  • 1 tsp. cornstarch (optional, a whole tbsp. makes them unbearably crunchy)
  • 1/2 tsp. garlic powder (optional)
  • 3/4 tsp. table salt
  • freshly ground pepper
  • 3 tbsp. olive oil (olive oil cooks at a lower temp, if using other oil, might need to shorten roasting times per side)
  • 1 head garlic, cloves separated but unpeeled (optional)
  • 1 tbsp. butter (don't add salt at the end if using salted butter)
  • 1 tsp. minced fresh parsley or cilantro (optional, you can use a smaller amount of dried basil, etc. I like a bit of fresh dill when we have it.)
  • 1/8 tsp. grated lemon zest (optional, be careful here, lest you have overly lemony potatoes. If using more than one fresh herb, leave this out.)

Instructions:

  1. Preheat oven and a large, rimmed sheetpan (cookie sheet) or roasting pan at 425° F. (this recipe was developed using a gas oven, which sucks. If using an electric oven, you might get away with shorter roasting times.)
  2. In a large bowl, combine cut potatoes, cornstarch, garlic powder, salt and pepper. Make sure that the spices and cornstarch are well-distributed. You can toss with clean hands for about a minute until everything is well-distributed.
  3. Take pan out of oven, add the oil and evenly coat the pan.
  4. Evenly distribute the potatoes on the pan, carefully toss in the oil with spatula and roast for 25 minutes or until potatoes are browned on bottom. (Now is a good time to wash and dry the bowl in which you mixed the potatoes, you'll need it later.)
  5. After 15 minutes of roasting, throw the garlic cloves into roasting pan (do it quickly as we don't care much about their distribution and don't want to let too much heat out of the oven).
  6. Take potatoes out of oven 10 minutes later, flip potatoes over with spatula, distribute garlic evenly and roast for an additional 15 minutes (if you have time, you can individually flip the potato pieces to get more even browning, but that's not essential).
  7. Add the pat of butter, parsley/herbs and lemon zest to the bottom of the large bowl and let sit until potatoes are done.
  8. When done roasting, add potatoes to the large bowl and toss until evenly coated with butter mixture . Adjust seasonings as desired. Serve hot.

UPDATE [2009-09-26T12:56:00]: The best plan seems to be 15-10-15 for a total of 40 minutes roasting. Put the potatoes in, after 15 add the garlic, after 10 more flip potatoes, then roast for a final 15 minutes. This allows the garlic to get super mushy and roasted while allowing for a total of 40 minutes of potato roasting time.