Potatoes! Does it really need an ‘e’ in it? Speelchekker says so, so it stays. For now. Maybe we’ll take a vote later. Not really important, because we all know what a potato is. You say potato, I say potato, let’s call the whole thing off because that doesn’t really work when it’s written down.
Anyway, this is a variation on yer-actual-standard roast potato that I created about fifteen years ago. I know when it was, because it was just before my youngest son was born. His mother declared she wasn’t hungry, so I made some potato for myself. I didn’t get to eat it, because apparently it smelled too good. I have subsequently made more, and managed to eat them (the trick is to make twice as much as you want). Youngest son also likes these potatoes, possibly because he was involved in the initial sampling.
Gentlemen*, start your ovens!
“What are the ingredients?” I hear you cry. You will need:
- Potato. As much as you like. Double if you live with someone else.
- Butter. Three or four kilos is enough. (This is a joke. Please don’t use more than a kilo, it’s wasteful and it only turns to mush)
- The herby holy trinity – salt (pref sea salt in this case), black pepper, and garlic (powder is fine, and easy)
- Dried chives. Yeah, you heard me. Chives. If you are actually useless and don’t have any dried chives, use parsley. If you haven’t got parsley, you’re missing out on part of the flavour, so I’m not sure what we’re going to do with you.
- Vinegar (optional)
Prep
- Chop the tater into bite sized chunks, or a little larger. They will get slightly smaller as we go on.
- Turn the oven up as high as it goes – like, gas mark 9, or 100 Kelvin, or whatever.
- Get a casserole dish or roasting tin. Chuck some lumps of butter in it.
Get cooking!
- Put the potato in a pan of boiling water
- If you have some, splash a little bit of vinegar in with it. It helps crisp the tater up later. Later tater. Ha.
- Leave it boiling for about 5 minutes.
- Get rid of the water with a colander or a slotted spoon or something.
- Chuck the softened potato on top of the butter in the dish
- Shove it in the oven
You may now chill for 15 or 20 minutes.
- Using oven gloves, take it out of the oven.
- Stir it with a spoon
- Add a bit more butter on top
- Put it back in the oven
Keep repeating this process every 10 minutes until some of the potato has gone brown. Then:
- With the potato out of the oven, cover it with salt, black pepper, garlic, and finally chives (or parsley).
- Chuck on a bit more butter.
- Give it good stir
- Put it back in the oven
Check it every 10 minutes again. If it’s not crispy enough, stir it, lob it back in the oven.
If it IS crispy enough, put it on a plate with a spoon, and pour the oily liquid from the bottom of the dish over it – there’s a lot of taste in there!
Eat it by itself, or find some left over pulled pork and eat it with that.
Alternative Method for Ketchup Weirdos
- Instead of adding the salt, pepper, etc, cover the thing in ketchup.
- Sprinkle grated cheese on top of it
- Put it back in the oven
- It’s done when the cheese is browning and crisping up
- Lift it onto a plate as if it were a pie, so the potato stays on the bottom and the cheese stays on top
- Enjoy your potato pizza, you weirdo
TL;DR: You want roast potato? We got roast potato right here. And it’s awesome.
(*) Gentlemen do not have to be actual gentlemen. Ladies may also start their ovens. All sexes are welcome to the potato party.