Crunchy Potato Sticks
Introduction
Serves: 6 or more
Ingredients
3 Tbsp olive oil
2 Tbsp butter
Flaky sea salt
2 Tbsp finely chopped rosemary
Method
1 Preheat oven to 180°C (350°F).
2 Peel potatoes and cut into rough chunks or fat wedges. Dry on paper towels or in a clean tea towel, then transfer to a large roasting tin. Drizzle with olive oil and dot with butter. Sprinkle generously with salt.
3 Cook potatoes for 1¼ hours, turning occasionally with a fish slice or until they are crisp and golden, adding the rosemary for the last 10 minutes’ cooking. Serve hot.
Recipe Notes
The picture tells the story here – you want to end up with some pieces of potato golden and crunchy, other bits less so, with a tender middle, and some wafer-thin golden crisps – the bits that got stuck on the bottom of the dish as you turned the potatoes over. Yep, that’s the ideal blend. 2 kilos of potatoes will fill a large roasting tin, the sort that just fits in a regular oven. You need the potatoes jammed in a bit, with some on top of each other so a little moisture remains. That’s funny, I know, because I am so often advising to allow a bit of space around food so it doesn’t steam with trapped moisture. But in this recipe there is a lot of fat – the butter gives a gorgeous flavour and really helps turn the potato chunks golden and crisp, so don’t cut back. But here’s the rub, if the potatoes are too spread out, they will fry and become hollow and dry. Well, some bits, yes, you sort of want to fry, so they get crunchy, and you want them to sort of catch in the dish so when you turn them over they break up a little and you get those gorgeous golden slivers. Do you get the gist? For some reason it doesn’t work if you cut the quantity back, you will get too many dry bits, so if you want to make a lesser amount, use a smaller roasting tin.