James Martin gives advice on cooking roast potatoes
How to make perfect roast potatoes, chefs and home cooks have pondered the question for many years. The people behind SORTEDfood have now tested it out with the help of Poppy O’Toole, aka the Queen of Potatoes.
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Ben, a chef, and Barry, an amateur cook, went head to head, trying out separate recipes.
While Ben devised his own recipe, Barry used Reddit suggestions to inspire his method. These included adding cornflower to the potatoes and cooking in stock.
Which method came out on top?
The contest was judged by TikTok chef Poppy O’Toole, otherwise known as Poppy Cooks, with almost two million followers on the social media site.
The methods were different, although there were similarities. Both cooks chose King Edwards, and they also both made sure to remove the eyes of the potatoes.
Both also agreed their par-boiled potatoes needed to be as fluffy as possible.
Barry said: “The key to roast potatoes is that they need to fluff up massively like a big woolly sheep.
“And then you smother the wool in beautiful fat and then roast them off.”
READ MORE: Chicken curry recipe: Romy Gill's definitive tips for classic Indian dish
Chef Ben’s roast potato method
Ben opted to quarter his potatoes. He then prepped his cooking water, to which he added “lots of salt” and also bicarb of soda, recommending “half a teaspoon to a couple of litres of water”.
Bicarb is good for fluffing up the outside of your potatoes.
Instead of putting his raw potatoes into cold water, he dropped them into boiling water and boiled them for five to six minutes to get a fluffy edge.
When he drained the par-boiled potatoes Ben left them by a fan to cool, although you could leave them by a window he added.
You could put the potatoes in the fridge overnight, as Ben did with a previous batch, to increase the texture even more.
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