Matt Preston's ultimate rule-breaker for the 'crispiest' roast potatoes

The things we do for crispy roast potatoes…

If there’s any day of the year when your crispy roast potato game must be on point, it’s Christmas Day. There’s nothing worse than a soggy, lacklustre spud – so on the day when Nan will definitely be judging your cooking skills, it’s important you’ve got all the tater tricks up your sleeve to make the crispiest roast potatoes. 

Here’s how Matt Preston roasts potatoes.

How to prep potatoes for roasting

In order to make the crispiest potatoes that the Christmas lunch table has ever witnessed, you need to start by cutting up and parboiling your potatoes.

When cutting your potatoes, Matt says: “make them a bit bigger than you want them to be but not gigantic.” They’ll lose water as they roast, so they’ll shrink a bit. 

“Parboil them so they just slip off the knife when you pierce them. Drain the potatoes and let them steam,” explains Matt. Letting them steam as long as possible ensures that extra moisture evaporates, ensuring maximum crispiness. 

Matt says a good trick to steaming them as much as possible is shaking them in the hot pan in which they boiled. “Put them back in the hot pan with the lid and shake. You’ll get more of the steam to come off. Because the drier the potato, the crispier they are.”

How to roast potatoes (according to Matt Preston)

“The most important thing” for guaranteeing crispy potatoes, says Matt, “is really dangerous and really hard but I can’t find another way”.

Hot oil and lots of it. 

The trick to making roast potatoes that you can hear your guest eating from a mile away because they crunch that much, is to add the parboiled potatoes to heaps of HOT oil… in the oven.

“Get a high-sided oven tray and pour a generous amount of oil in and get that oil really hot in the oven, and then do not take that hot tray of oil out of the oven,” Matt said. 

As he’s already said, this isn’t the safest nor easiest way to make roast potatoes, but it’s certainly doable! We recommend this method for more experienced home cooks and, as Matt advises: “Make sure you’re with one other person,” when using this roast spud tactic.

“One of you opens the oven and pulls the tray out a little bit, and the other one carefully puts the potatoes (one-by-one) into the hot oil and then shuts the oven door.”

Taste’s Digital Director, Amira Georgy, agrees that it’s a two-man job. She says: “Just be sure whoever is adding the potatoes to the pan is putting them in gently (not throwing them in). I would recommend adding the potatoes with tongs so they’re not getting too close to all that hot oil.” 

Matt exclaimed: “It’s really dangerous but OH. MY. GOODNESS.”

The things we do for crispy roast potatoes… But we don’t necessarily recommend you try it at home. 

There is another way.

An easier roast potato recipe

If becoming a spud stuntman is not for you, then check out our this classic roast potato recipe. This method still involves parboiling first and heating 2 tbsp of oil on a metal tray in the oven for 5 minutes. Here’s where we don’t do it quite like Matt (phew). The safer way is to take the tray out of the oven, add the potatoes as quickly as you can (without the oil splashing) and put it back into the oven.

What the recipe method doesn’t say is that you can place the hot tray directly onto the stove when you remove it from the oven, to keep the temperature of the oil up. Add the potatoes carefully, get them sizzling in the oil on the stovetop and then put them back in the oven. Science says it has pretty much the same outcome as Matt’s roasties. 

You’ll get flavoursome taters that are fluffy on the inside, and golden and crunchy on the outside. 

Potato perfection.

Done with classic roast potatoes? Try these.

We all love a crispy and salty roast potato, but what if you mixed them with sugar too? This recipe uses duck fat instead of oil to roast and crisp up your potatoes, then you mix some caster sugar with water to make a simple caramel that you toss through the potatoes at the end.

Also potato perfection, just slightly different.

Originally published as Matt Preston's ultimate rule-breaker for the 'crispiest' roast potatoes