The secret to perfect roast potatoes

Time to settle an age-old dispute before Christmas finally gets underway. This is how to cook perfect roast potatoes and – spoiler – you need to start prepping them now

Every year, as the holiday season approaches, kitchens across the UK become battlegrounds for the age-old dispute: what is the correct method for cooking perfect roast potatoes?

What variety of potato is best? Should you peel your spuds? Will parboiling them first making them fluffier? How far in advance should you do that? Which produces the crispiest roasties: oil, goose fat or beef dripping? It’s a minefield, and everyone thinks they’re right.

Sorted chef Kush Bhasin, who’s previously worked under Raymond Blanc and Atul Kochhar, has put the disputes to bed and shared his foolproof tips to ensure you get the perfect crunch with a fluffy middle for the Christmas dinner essential.

Kush’s perfect roast potatoes

The first step is to choose King Edward potatoes – they have the highest dry matter content and a low sugar content, which helps in achieving a dry, crispy outside.

Five days before

Prepare you potatoes up to five days ahead of the big meal. That’s right, you don’t need to stress about sorting out the spuds on the big day. Come 25 December, you’ll have everything ready to go, meaning all you need do is whack ’em in the oven.

Start by peeling the potatoes and halving – you want large, uniform pieces – then add them to heavily salted, boiling water (it should be as salty as the sea).

Reduce the heat to a tiny ismmer nad once the potatoes start to fall apart and “peel”, they’re ready. This should take 20-30 minutes. The peeling will help them absorb the salt from the water and goose fat when in the oven.

Boil them the day before or up to five days before, so they completely dry out and absorb the fat better.

Once they are cooked, drain them thoroughly, then leave them on a cooling rack so that they can fully dry out on all sides. Refridgerating them overnight is a bonus.

On Christmas Day

Preheat a roasting tin with goose fat in an oven set at 220C. The fat needs to be as hot as the oven, then put the potatoes in – use tongs or place them in one by one so you don’t get splashed.

Make sure they eat hit the goose fat and aren’t stacked up – they should sizzle when they hit the goose fat.

Douse them in the goose fat so they are completely covered. No need to season again.

Cook them in the oven at 220C for 20 minutes, then reduce the oven to 180C and cook them for a further 20 minutes. When you turn the oven down, rotate all the potatoes, so they get an even cook.

When they are finished, they should be held together like “glass” and crack with a loud crunch when you take a bite, yet still have a deliciously moist centre. Potato perfection!