With Christmas just a few weeks away, Brits are desperately searching for the best Christmas dinner recipe – ensuring the turkey is golden and the roast potatoes are crispy.
I thought I would give Jamie Oliver’s “Best roast potatoes” recipe a whirl ahead of time to see if it lives up to its name.
Admittedly, I usually leave the cooking to someone else on Christmas day, but as someone who tends to look for quick, simple recipes, I wanted to give this one a go as it promised to be “super easy”. It’s fair to say, I don’t think I made a show stopper.
Starting off, I headed to Sainsbury’s to grab all of the ingredients. The list was fairly simple, with just five ingredients to find – Maris Piper potatoes, goose fat, olive oil, a bulb of garlic and fresh sage.
Having found all of the items, it came to a grand total of £12.85 – a much heftier price tag than Aunt Bessies frozen roast potatoes that come in at just £2.40.
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I was quick to judge when I saw the recipe called for overnight prep, but it actually made a lot of sense when I came to cooking them the next day.
Christmas is often a busy day, and to those stuck with the cooking, it can be hard to find your way out of the kitchen. But with this recipe, it allows to get all of the boring prep work out of the way the night before, and then you can simply just put them in the oven the next day.
The prep required peeling the potatoes, parboiling them for 15 minutes and placing them in a roasting tray with the goose fat and olive oil.
I will agree with the celebrity chef that this was “super easy” and I think pretty much anyone could do this recipe. The next day, I simply popped them in the oven for an hour with some crushed garlic cloves, before taking them out and half-squashing them.
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I then tossed the sage leaves with some oil, before sprinkling them over the top and putting it back in the oven for 30 minutes. And just like that, it was done.
This recipe was definitely easy to follow and fairly quick to make (minus the overnight prep) – but it just didn’t make sense to me. The Maris Piper potatoes had to be around 8cm which makes them fairly large and means it’s hard to get the perfect level of crispiness.
If you prefer smaller, crispier potatoes, I don’t think this recipe would be for you. But for those who prefer a fluffy centre with a slight crisp outer edge, this would work great. However, my expectation from Jamie Oliver’s picture definitely didn’t live up to what mine ended up looking like.
I also felt like the potatoes lacked flavour and I couldn’t taste the garlic. Granted, I am no food connoisseur but like any other Brit, I have tasted my fair share of roast potatoes.
I felt like something was missing from these roast potatoes – and I think they could have done with more goose fat and oil so they didn’t look and taste so dry.
Describing his recipe, Jamie Oliver wrote: “Simple as roast potatoes are, there’s a handful of tiny, but important, details – picked up throughout my cooking career – that when combined give you this ultimate recipe, which I believe creates the perfect roast potato. What a luxury.”
Personally, these definitely are not the best roast poatoes I’ve ever tried, so I’m not sure it can take the name of the “perfect roast potato”.
But for those looking for something easy and quick this Christmas, it could be a good one to follow. As for me, I’m still on the hunt for the perfect recipe.
Jamie Oliver’s Best Roast Potatoes Recipe
Ingredients
- 2.5 kg medium Maris Piper potatoes
- 4 tablespoons goose fat or unsalted butter
- olive oil
- 1 bulb of garlic
- ½ a bunch fresh sage , (15g)
Method
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