At last I mastered the art of the perfect roast potato!

I have no idea where I first read the tip re. roasting potatoes, but once they are parboiled, (cheapest potatoes), just bring to boil, drain, then toss in some plain flour before putting in oven in very hot oil or fat. Ensure all parts of potato are covered in the fat. Then roast at 180 - 200 degrees. It is a good idea to add some salt to the flour before tossing the potatoes.

Thank you, thank you, thank you everyone. Our Boxing Day roaties were superb. Soft and fluffy inside and crisp and crunchy outside and soooo tasty! Now I've mastered it we will never again suffer soggy roast spuds. I will also try the semolina coating as a neighbour of mine used to do that and said it produced nice results.

Now if someone can just tell me how to dry roast veggies I'll be a happy bunny.
You might expect that by my age I'd be a competent cook, but cooking and it's finer points has never really interested me. I just slap food on plates to feed people. But there now seems to be an expectation that grandmothers should be good cooks, so I'm trying to improve.

I love roast potatoes and parboil a main crop variety, drain, leave them to dry (with a tea towel over top of saucepan), shake, season with salt & pepper and put them in pre heated tray of olive oil. I cook them on a high temperature near the top of the oven. They are good. However, my son's 'Christmas' spuds were delicious - he used same method, but coated them in semolina and cooked in butter & goose fat! I'll try that next time.

I think Nigella used semolina.

Thank you, * mumofmadboys*, I was beginning to think I’d imagined my father using semolina!

yes after more years than can be counted ,i did the best roast potatoes ever. ,In the Mail on Sundays Tom Parker Bowles is a food critic and he gave the perfect recipe for our roasties ,so with trepidation i tried it ,and ,well ,it works ,they were oh so tasty ,not one left ,Maris Piper is the potato to go for ,he par boils ,till they are on the verge of being cooked ,,strains them and lets them cool in their own steam ,now he says you can even leave the cooked pots overnight in the fridge then when you are ready to roast ,he suggests goose or duck fat smoking hot ,then roast until they are the colour you like he suggested 40 mins ,but mine were ready after 30 ,oh lovely everyone remarked how good they were ,not one left

I have rolled parboiled potatoes in semolina before roasting them too. Gives them a lovely crisp outside.

I roast potatoes every Sunday, par boil, shake, use various fats, roast high for about 45 minutes.

Sometimes if short of oven space I roast them early for about 30 minutes and let them cool, then pop in for 20 minutes when needed.
When they are browning nicely I take them out and use a potato masher to press down on each one until the sides 'burst'. Back in for about 15 minutes. This gives more surface area to get crunchy. n

Sometimes use garlic from the tube.
Dgc say my roasties are the best!!

I buy it in a block from Tesco

This year I used the cheapest spuds that Tesco had
- them cut into 'largish chunks'
- parboiled for 5 mins
- drained and allowed steam to evaporate
- put into a roasting tin with oil that had been in a pre-heated oven
- added the 'raw quartered parsnips' after around 20 mins
- flipped the spuds in the oil
- drizzled parsnips with honey after another 20 mins
- left 'em alone for another 10 mins

Went down a blooming treat!

I added panko breadcrumbs at the roughing up stage as suggested by Prue Leith and it did make them extra crunchy. Having said that my mum used to always roast spuds around the joint, no parboiling, and they were delicious.

Peel the spuds and cut them to roughly the same size - about two to two and a half inches. Place them in a pan and cover with cold water. Bring them to the boil and take them out after 25 minutes from starting to cook them. Let the steam come off them and get them as dry as possible. Drizzle with olive oil and bake for 50 minutes at 160 degrees in a fan oven. They have to be served straight away or they will go soft.

They can be kept for a day in a fridge at the parboiled stage and then roasted later.

None of this seems intuitively right and yet it works.

I always do mashed for larger dinners, since my family really likes them. I am getting better at roast potatoes, but really don't do them often.

It's funny to hear that you know the variety of potatoes; here they only sell them as 'red', 'white', 'new' or 'russet'.

I wish they did name the variety. It seems potatoes have gotten very expensive the last year. I hear the crop year was not good (in Canada anyway) so that will affect the costs.

According to the family my roast potatoes are great, I do them the same way my Mother used to.No parboiling, and any type of potatoes will do.
Peeled and cut in halves, flat side down in the dish, pour cold water over them to an inch depth, salt them and dab chunks of vitalite or butter ( they taste the same in the end) cook for an hour and a half at 170 ( into a hot oven) and turn them over after 45 mins.Baste a couple of times whilst cooking.

We never have any beef dripping Foxyferret or I might!

Please tell me EXACTLY how you achieved this miracle , PLEEEEESE ! My DH does a lot of our cooking and , as the years have gone by , he has developed his own little ways which he thinks are best ...except sometimes they aren't.
Yesterdays roasties were a case in point . He knows to par boil ... but then he pours gallons of cold oil over the cold parboiled spuds . This , of course, has the effect that the cold potatoes (& parsnips ) in this case , soak up the oil. As a result our roasties end up a greasy , soggy mess.
Yesterday he caught me trying to drain the excess oil off the spuds . He gets so upset; like a 6 year old in a strop .
Sadly, yesterday, it somewhat spoiled my day because we had guests as well as family for Christmas lunch .. and it was embarrassingly horrible.
Most of the meal was cold by the time he served up and the roasties were a soggy , inedible mess .
If I could show him your advice i might have a better chance of getting him to alter his ways without upsetting him too much .

Am I the only person who cooks them in beef dripping? They always turn out great.

Red Roosters or Maris Piper cooked exactly as my mom used to do them.Par-boiled,dried,run fork down them for extra crispiness. Cooked around meat or (shock horror) in very hot melted lard.Delicious!

In all the posts and articles on roast potatoes, I’ve never seen a mention of my father’s method of parboiling, then coating with duck fat and a wee sprinkling of semolina.

Sorry wrong brackets

I'm with Nvella , I always buy Roosters when doing a roast and have been known to trawl around several supermarkets looking for them. My family love my roast potatoes {smile}

Par-boil for 10 mins...... tip into colander.... shake to make fluffy... salt and pepper... straight into hot goose fat on 200c+ ...30 mins cooking should do it . Beautiful golden roasties with white fluffy insides. I couldn’t get them right as I always did them mums way.... my son in law showed me the ‘proper’ way.

Readymeals forgot to mention that the roasting tin and oil should be preheated too.

Temperature? Around 200 ish (mines a van oven) Time? I don't actually time them, just cook until they look right! (You can sort of tell when they are getting there when they "feel" crispy as you turn them with the tongs, as opposed to soft and squidgy)

*then just cook. Typo

I never parboil. Hot butter, make sure they're all coated, them just cook. I couldn't be bothered with the faff of parboiling/cooling/drying. And they always come out great the way I do them, so no need.