Location: My tiny kitchen

This is my favourite (and only!) recipe of roast potatoes. I always try my best to find the kind of potatoes that are small, almost-perfectly-round and pink. I called them “pink nugget potatoes” since I don’t know the proper culinary term for them. These pink potatoes are very starchy and therefore they are very suitable for roasting.

To bring things up a notch, I season the potatoes with a rosemary salt that could be easily made from scratch. These potatoes have a texture like deep fried potato wedges; they have a very crispy outside and a starchy, soft inside. The key is to first boil them, season them while they are hot and finish them in a very hot oven.

Like eating chips, I cannot stop at eating just one of with these potatoes.

Ingredients

- 20 pink nugget potatoes
- 1 tbsp of rosemary
- 4 tbsp of beef fat dripping at room temperature. Use olive oil if you don’t have fat dripping.

Steps

1. Set oven to 450F.
2. Bring a big pot of water to boil.
3. Using a brush, clean the potatoes while rinsing them under water.
4. Put the potatoes and 4 tbsp of coarse salt (yes, 4 tbsp!) into the boiling water. Cook the potatoes until they are fork tender. This took about 15 minutes for me.
5. While the potatoes are being cooked, make the rosemary salt. Put equal amount of rosemary and coarse salt (that is 1 tbsp each of rosemary and salt) into a mortar and pestle. Pound the rosemary and salt until they become very fine.
6. Right after the potatoes are done cooking, remove the water. Cut the potatoes into halves or quarter them if needed.
7. While the potatoes are hot, season them with the rosemary salt and fat. Make sure each potato is coated with the seasoning. Put in freshly ground pepper.
8. Layer the potatoes in a baking dish. Make sure the potatoes are placed in only one layer. If the potatoes don’t have enough room, they won’t brown evenly.
9. Roast the potatoes in the hot oven for 1/2 hour.

You might think this is a lot of work for making just roast potatoes! There might be many steps in this recipe but each step is simple and fast. All these steps together ensure the potatoes tasting crispy and flavourful.

Thanks to Jamie Oliver and Heston Blumenthal, who inspired me to create this recipe.