The Best Roasted Potatoes You'll Ever Make (Restaurant-Quality)

Hi, I'm Frank Proto.

I'm a professional chef and culinary instructor,

and today I'm gonna show you the best way

to make roasted potatoes at home.

We're talking everything you need to know

about making roasted potatoes crispy on the outside

and soft and fluffy in the middle.

This is Roasted Potatoes 101.

This recipe is not hard.

It doesn't take a lot of ingredients.

It doesn't take a lot of special items.

Let's go prep our potatoes.

[bright music]

The potatoes we're using today are russets.

Russets are a starchy potato that roasts up really well.

A lot of times when you have french fries,

they're using russets.

So these are the ones that get crisp on the outside

and soft and fluffy in the middle.

For the most part, I'm peeling these potatoes

'cause I wanna parcook them.

Basically, the starch is gonna gelatinize,

and we're gonna have a nice

kind of crust on the outside from that.

You can do these with the jackets on, that's fine,

but I feel like you get a better crunch

if you take the skin off.

You can see the potato's long and skinny.

I usually take the top and the bottom off,

and then we peel in between.

So we kinda just do a clean sweep of the potato.

It shouldn't take more than 10 seconds per potato.

So I'm gonna put this potato in the water,

not only to kind of wash off the outside,

but to also keep them from oxidizing.

You'll see the oxidation pretty much starts fairly quickly.

It'll start to turn kind of grayish or grayish brown.

Is it bad at that point?

No, you can peel it again

and get all that gray off and then put it in some water.

You don't wanna do it for too long.

I usually do it for maybe three or four hours if I have to,

but I wouldn't put these in the fridge overnight.

So at this point, our potatoes are in the water.

They are rinsed off really nice.

But all that stuff that was on the outside

is kind of floating right in my water.

What I want to do is dump this water out,

put some fresh water on top to cook the potatoes.

Our potatoes are in clean water,

and now we're gonna cut them into the perfect size.

So I'm gonna take my potato and I'm gonna cut it in half.

Now, I think that this might be a little too large

for one bite, but I think this is a great size.

Not only do they cook fairly quickly,

you have a nice ratio of crunchy outside and soft inside.

What I found with this method

is that I get a good, consistent result that's delicious.

[bright music]

By starting the potatoes out in cold salted water,

we're gonna start the process

of cooking the potatoes through.

So if we don't do this step,

the outside of the potato's gonna be crispy

and the inside will be hard.

And I'm not shy about the salt

'cause it seasons that outside of the potato.

So give that a quick stare with your spider.

Once it comes to a boil, we're gonna lower down to a simmer.

We don't want this to boil the whole time

'cause what happens is the water's really rough.

The potatoes kind of hit into each other,

and they start to break up

and fall apart and give off too much starch.

Boiling potatoes can take anywhere

between 5 and 15 minutes, but for the most part,

they're in the simmering water for a short amount of time.

A lot of people will be tempted to get in there

and start stirring things up.

Don't, just leave it alone.

Let them come to a boil gently,

lower 'em down, and then we can get in there

and see if they're ready to go or not.

Now the potatoes are boiling.

I'm gonna lower it till it's just a light simmer.

We see little bubbles here and there.

We wanna get these at the right stage

so that they're slightly cooked.

I'm gonna stick my knife in here,

and you can see that it holds onto the potato.

It's sliding just slightly.

The outside is soft.

You can see when I stick my finger in there,

I get an indentation,

and that's what I want.

Also, if I get my nail, put my nail in it,

the top layer kinda squeezes off.

So it's time to take these potatoes out of the water.

Let's shut our water off.

You could use a colander,

but I find using one of these spiders

is a lot more efficient.

We want the potatoes to be dry at this point.

The drier the potato, the quicker it browns.

You can see that there's steam coming off them,

which is drying them out as well.

Before we put these into the pan,

we need them to cool all the way.

What that does is it allows the starch

on the outside to firm up.

That's gonna ensure a nice, crispy crust.

[bright music]

I want that brown crust.

So I start my potatoes in a cast iron skillet on the stove.

The reason I choose cast iron

is because it holds the heat really well.

I can tell my pan is ready

because I do see a little wisp of smoke coming off of it.

Today's potatoes, we're using ghee,

which is basically just a clarified butter.

It has good flavor and it has a high smoke point.

We wanna have a high smoke point

so our oil does not degrade and give us weird off-flavors.

So Chef Frank, why don't you just use whole butter?

If I use whole butter,

the solids in the whole butter are gonna burn

before the potatoes are actually cooked.

With the ghee, I'm not shy, right?

I'm gonna plop it in there.

Ghee is butter without any solids in it.

So you shouldn't hear a lot of snap,

crackle, and pop going on.

It should be just kind of a light little crackle.

You can see my fat is hot.

I have a light haze of smoke.

That's good.

I have it on low heat right now.

I'm gonna turn it up just a little before I add my potatoes

because when I add the potatoes to the pan,

it's gonna cool the pan off slightly and I don't want that.

I wanna try and maintain temperature.

I'm gonna start with the flat sides.

You can see, as I put them in the pan, what's happening?

I see bubbles.

Bubbles are good.

Bubbles usually mean that the moisture is cooking off

and the fat is doing its job by browning the outside.

I try not to overcrowd the pan.

If I put too many potatoes in there,

we're not gonna get a nice, even brown.

We're gonna get kind of a more spotty brown,

and they might give off some moisture

and stop the browning process from happening.

Moisture is the enemy of brown, crispy goodness.

At this point, my potatoes are bubbling away happily.

I'm gonna turn my heat up just a little bit,

and I'm gonna give 'em a check, right?

They shouldn't be sticking,

but they should also be starting to brown.

I think it's a good opportunity

to put a little seasoning on these right now.

We'll go with a little bit of salt

a little bit of black pepper.

I go light on the seasoning right now

because I like to season throughout the process.

Seasoning throughout the process

ensures that we season evenly.

Things aren't salty.

They just have really good flavor.

All right, let's look at our potatoes.

I'm starting off some nice browning on the outside.

What we're gonna do is we're gonna turn them now.

Look at how beautiful that is.

It's started getting nice and brown, right?

And that's what we want.

We want the brown to be started,

and then we can throw these puppies in the oven.

[bright music]

So now I'm gonna take these

and put them into a preheated 400-degree oven

to continue that beautiful browning.

The potatoes are gonna be in the oven

for about 20 to 25 minutes.

At about the halfway mark,

we're gonna turn them over so that we ensure

we get that nice, golden crust all the way around.

So these potatoes are about halfway through,

and they're ready to flip or turn.

So you can see what's happening over here.

We're getting more brown,

so I'm gonna give 'em another turn.

Try to get 'em as brown as we can on all sides.

Smells delicious.

Looks delicious.

Now we can put them back in the oven just to finish cooking.

Potatoes are out of the oven.

They're crispy and delicious looking.

What I'd like to do at this point

is take them out of the pan

and let them drain on paper towels,

just to get any excess fat off of them.

And back in the day when I worked at McDonald's,

this is what they would use on the fries.

Fine salt.

Basically a popcorn salt, and it's called popcorn salt

because it's super fine and it sticks to the popcorn.

If you don't have popcorn salt, just get a blender out,

blitz up a little regular salt,

and you'll have a nice, fine salt for this.

It's been a long time since I worked at McDonald's,

but this is one of those things that stuck with me

throughout my culinary career.

For our final garnish, I'm gonna add some herbs to these.

I chose chives and parsley.

First of all, chives have a nice oniony bite,

and I love that, right?

We'll take a little bit of a parsley,

and the parsley gives us a lot of freshness, right?

We have that rich butter in there.

We're gonna have a buttery flavor,

and the parsley and chives

is just gonna kinda lift it up and slightly cut it.

So you take your parsley, roll it up,

and then I'm just gonna chop.

I always add my herbs at the end.

If you put them in the pan,

pretty much all the flavor goes away

and they burn and they get too dark,

and they're just little burn bits on your potatoes.

Buttery, herby, and delicious.

And there you have it,

the best way to make roasted potatoes.

Okay, it's time to taste.

Look at how beautiful they look, right?

We can hear that that's crispy on top,

and that's what we want.

Right, so crisp on the outside.

Look at how soft and fluffy that is on the inside.

So let's give it a taste.

Actually, it's a little on the creamy side on the inside.

The outside's got this nice, nutty flavor from that ghee.

So even though there's a couple of extra steps with these,

it is worth it 100%.

Look at that inside, nice and soft.

If you wanna show your chef skills off to people,

make them some roasted potatoes.

Simple, easy, and delicious.