Crunchy Roasted Potatoes

After I made these Crunchy Roasted Potatoes with our breakfast last week I had quite a few requests for the potatoes. They’re deceptively simple to make, just slightly more involved than your typical roasted potatoes recipe. This one is an adaption of Serious Eats’ aptly named The Best Crispy Roast Potatoes Ever. The key to the crispy, crunchy exterior is in the method for their recipe: shaking the boiled and drained potatoes roughly until the outsides break off and begin to form basically a “potato paste” on the outsides.

For my recipe, I add potato flour and cornstarch to encourage an even crispier-crunchier crust. I also tend to leave the skin on, whereas Serious Eats recommends peeling them. If I use russets I do peel them (or ask my youngest kid to do it for me). That’s enough background! Let’s make some Crunchy Roasted Potatoes!

Crunchy Roasted Potatoes Ingredients

Feel free to jump to the full recipe, but here are useful notes about the ingredients you will need to make this Crunchy Roasted Potatoes recipe:

• Potatoes: Yukon Gold (or just yellow) potatoes are my favorite for this recipe, but russets and reds work just fine. If using russet potatoes I peel them, but I don’t peel the others. You do what suits you and your tastebuds.
• Fresh parsley, rosemary: An entire rosemary sprig and a small handful of fresh parsley (leaves and stems), to steep in the fat or oil you decide to use. More on that next.
• Duck fat, butter: Duck fat is by far my favorite choice for this recipe, but olive oil is a nice substitute (and would also make this recipe vegan). You could also use ghee or clarified butter. I add a bit of butter for flavor, browning, and just because I like adding butter to things, honestly.
• Potato flour, cornstarch: If you don’t have either, it’s OK, just shake the potatoes up a little more. A lot more, actually, since that’s the only way you’re getting any crust to crisp on these Crunchy Roasted Potatoes. You could also add a dusting of flour, but it would need to be a literal dusting, and that would be hard to achieve as it will generally stick where you sprinkle it and not distribute evenly. Try that with caution if you’re intent on it.
• Kosher salt, baking soda: For boiling the potatoes. The baking soda will encourage them to release starch and assist in the crisp production, and the kosher salt will ensure the potatoes are flavored not just on the outside.
• Seasoned salt, granulated garlic, onion powder, smoked paprika, cracked black pepper: This is our seasoning blend. Seasoned salt is generally just salt and these spices blended together, so feel free to use kosher salt in place of seasoned salt and increase the amount of the other listed spices a bit. You could also just season the Crunchy Roasted Potatoes however you like. Make sure you do it liberally!

How to Make Crunchy Roasted Potatoes

Full instructions are included in the recipe below, but here is a basic overview of what you’ll need to do, along with some important tidbits to help you make the most of this Crunchy Roasted Potatoes recipe:

• Boil ’em? Mash ’em? Stick ’em in a stew? Preheat your oven to 450°F and line a large rimmed baking sheet with a silicone liner or parchment paper. It needs to be large enough to hold the potatoes in a single layer. If it isn’t, use two baking sheets. They need space to become Crunchy Roasted Potatoes. Add your potatoes along with the kosher salt and baking soda to a large pot. Fill it with cold water – enough to cover the potatoes by a couple of inches. Place the pot over high heat and bring to a boil. Stir, cover partially with a lid, and reduce the heat to medium-high. Continue cooking the potatoes until you can easily pierce the center of the pieces with a fork or knife.
• Heeeeerrre’s flavor! While the potatoes are boiling place another pan, this time a small saucepan, over medium-high heat. Add your duck fat or other fat – check the ingredients section above for advice and suggestions – along with all of the remaining seasonings, the fresh herbs, and the butter. Simmer, stirring frequently, until the herbs have turned crisp and darkened in color. Remove from heat and cover.
• Shake ’em up. When potatoes are tender in the middle drain them and let them rest in the colander for a minute or so, to steam. At this point, you can either transfer them back into the pot or continue in your colander (put it inside of a mixing bowl):  shake the hell out of the potatoes. If you know how to toss a frying pan, do that: use the same circular motion. The potatoes will start to crumble on the outside, releasing lil’ potato pieces. This is the first stage of building the crunch in these Crunchy Roasted Potatoes.
• Coat the taters. Now, transfer the potatoes back to the pot, or to a large mixing bowl (if your colander was inside of one use that one). Sprinkle the potato starch and cornstarch over them, then start shaking again. Use a spatula to stir them if you need to, you want the powders to work thru the potatoes. How aggressive you are has a lot to do with how crispy and crunchy they’ll be. Check the pictures above and below this section: they display the difference. Once you have a nice coating of potato paste on the outside of most potato pieces – again, the thicker the paste, the crunchier the exterior so if you want them to look like the potatoes above, go nuts here! – add the flavored fat/oil from earlier. Use a wooden spoon or silicone spatula to gently stir, coating the potatoes in the liquid.
• Roast ’em! Transfer potatoes to the prepared sheet pan(s). Spread them out into an even layer, then transfer to the oven and let roast undisturbed for 20 minutes. After 20 minutes use the biggest spatula you have to flip the potatoes to the other side. Make sure to loosen any that are stuck to the pan and turn those too. Spread back out into a single layer and place back in the oven until golden brown and crispy as hell – about 35 minutes longer. Dassit!

What To Serve With Crunchy Roasted Potatoes 

First off, my Small Batch Buttermilk Biscuits and these Crunchy Roasted Potatoes both cook at the same temperature. Just wanted to throw that out there. Here are some other options (breakfast is on my mind heavy right now, but these would be great with any meal)…

Obligatory Pinterest pins – 

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