British-Style Roast Potatoes #recipe by @LeslieKarst

 

As those of you who follow me on Facebook know, I’ve been in Oxford, England for several weeks, sucking up the atmosphere and doing my best not to end up as one of the myriad dead bodies the fair city is famous for (cf. the Morse mysteries, Gaudy Night, Edmund Crispin).

But I’ve also been doing a lot of eating. (And walking, thank goodness, which helps burn some of the massive amount of calories I’ve been ingesting via cream teas, fish ’n chips, Cornish pasties, pork pies, and beer...lots of beer! Don’t worry: I’ll be doing a post in a few weeks detailing all the luscious food I’ve been able to try during my trip.)

We’re lucky enough to have a flat here with a kitchen, so several nights ago we made a dinner of local sausages bought from our local butcher shop (Oxfordshire, Old Spot, and Beer and Mustard), a green salad, roasted carrots and onions, and the kind of crispy-outside, tender-inside roast potatoes you can only seem to get in the British Isles.

 

Unless you follow the recipe below, in which case you can make them yourself!

The secret to this delectable dish is in the par-boiling and then vigorous shaking of the potatoes, which gives them lots of surface area to absorb the fat. And yes, the kind of fat is important: they’re best made with beef or pork drippings, or even duck fat (yum!). As we weren’t making a beef roast (or “joint,” as they’re called here), which would have provided the needed fat, we purchased from the butcher some beef drippings to use. (Note that this recipe will also work with vegetable oil, though the flavor won’t be the same.)

here I am with Stephen, our darling local butcher

British-Style Roast Potatoes

(serves 3)

Ingredients

6 medium-size white potatoes, peeled

1-2 tablespoons salt

½ cup beef, pork, or duck fat

3 cloves garlic, minced (optional)

 

Directions

Heat the oven to 400 degrees F.

Bring a large pot of water to boil and add the salt.

Cut the potatoes into large chunks, then add them to the water and boil for about 5 minutes, until the tip of a knife can just start to slide in, but the potatoes are still quite firm. 

 

Drain the potatoes, then put them back in the pot over the flame and let the residual water cook off, about 30 seconds.

 

Cover the pot (we don’t have a lid here at our rental for the pot, nor was our pot really big enough, but we made do), and shake it back and forth vigorously until the potatoes are nice and rough outside. The rougher they are, the more surface area for all that luscious fat!

 

Heat the fat in a large frying pan, then add the garlic (not traditionally used, but hey—garlic!) and let it cook until softened and just starting to brown. 

 

Add the potatoes to the pan and toss, making sure they’re all coated in the fat. 

 

Place the taters on a roasting pan large enough that that they’re not crowded, then roast until browned all over, turning them once or twice during the roasting—30-40 minutes. (See photo at top.)

 

Cheers, mate! (Note: It seems that Blogger will not allow me to comment whilst in England, so please know that I'm reading and enjoying all your comments, even though I can't reply to them!)

 

🌿  🍖  🌱

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