Senior sous chef Ollie Joell at Farmer, Butcher, Chef restaurant at Goodwood Hotel, near Chichester, West Sussex, explains how to prepare the perfect roast potatoes.
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00:00 Ollie, your roast potatoes are absolutely amazing. Can you share the secret with
00:06 everyone watching this film because they will be preparing their Christmas
00:10 roasties very soon. What do they need to do to make them as special as yours?
00:15 Firstly, I'd get a large potato. I'd say Maris Piper is a really good, quite
00:22 high in starch which is what you need for a roast potato, you want that crispiness.
00:25 Peel them really well, make sure there's no black spots. Cut them
00:30 into quarters and you want the quarters to be all the same size really to keep
00:33 the cook even. Then I would get some water on and bring it up to a simmer
00:37 so sort of around 60 degrees and add herbs so rosemary, thyme, garlic. At 60
00:43 degrees that infusion happens so you get this nice infusion of this
00:47 rosemary, thyme and garlic through the cooking of the potatoes from the first off.
00:51 Don't forget to add a large amount of salt which is crucial. Then add your
00:55 potatoes in and bring it up just to a rolling boil. As it comes up to a rolling
01:00 boil I turn mine off or a very low heat depending on how many you've got. If you've
01:04 got a lot probably a low heat because it will lose the heat a lot quicker.
01:09 You keep it a low heat or a no heat and you poach it and what that does is
01:13 the outsides have this hard hit of heat and then the insides are going to be
01:17 slowly cooked because you want them to be just about holding together but not
01:21 falling apart. It's like that perfect balance between the both being
01:25 overcooked but being just perfect. You take them out and you let the
01:29 steam come off them which dries them out, which the starch activates and it sort of
01:34 dries out. You put them into a colander and ruffle them up. For us we heat
01:40 up our own Goodwood beef fat which we infuse once again with rosemary, thyme
01:44 and garlic and we pour it over the ruffled up potatoes in the tray. 180
01:50 degrees and 15 minute intervals you just turn them, keep turning, keep turning for
01:55 about up until maybe about an hour, an hour and a half mark depending on the
01:58 size of your potatoes. You want a nice golden brown colour and then
02:03 you and then what we do is we have our own Goodwood beef salt that we make
02:08 from our own beef fats. We run it down the beef fat, put the salt on it and
02:12 just mix it together and it enhances that flavour of the beef fat cooked in the
02:15 roasties. Give it a season and then we just add the final loaf of aromatics again,
02:21 rosemary, thyme and garlic for that last 15 minutes and it just finishes them off.
02:24 And that's literally it. It's simple once you know the correct way of doing it
02:29 but the finished product is outstanding. Well it was outstanding. Just to clarify
02:35 for people, so I've got four large Marist Piper potatoes, I've cut them into
02:40 quarters so I've got 16 quarters there. How long are they going to be in the
02:43 water in phase one of this? I'd say depending on the size, so the
02:49 ones that we have we cut quite large because I think that's crucial as well.
02:52 You want them cut as large as you can so the larger the potatoes the better.
02:56 It used between us, I'd say between start to finish from going with the water
03:01 coming out probably half an hour. So quite long? Yeah, yeah definitely but then it's
03:06 how quick you turn down that heat. You want to turn down that heat and as soon as it
03:09 comes up because the water will stay hot but you won't boil them so
03:15 much that will just fall apart. You want to find that perfect medium and just
03:19 don't be afraid to just keep paying attention. I know it's only boiling potatoes
03:22 but pay attention to every single process that you do and you know the
03:26 product speaks for itself really. Brilliant, thanks Ollie.