Why you are cooking this tonight
There is the dry packet of supermarket baked potatoes. There is the tray of oil-roasted potatoes with rosemary. And then there is the crispy duck fat potato: small, almost-cubed, fluffy on the inside, so crunchy on the outside you can hear it across the room. Once you have made them you will not bother with any other roast potato again.
The method is three steps. Boil, bash, roast. Parboil the spuds until they are almost cooked. Drain hard and roughen the edges by tossing them in the colander. Tip into smoking-hot duck fat and roast for forty-five minutes. The rough edges are where the crunch lives.
Duck fat at Harris Farm or any decent butcher. A jar lasts forever in the fridge. This side pairs with a Sunday roast, a steak dinner, the Christmas table, and Tuesday-night lamb chops.
Notes on method
Maris Piper or Dutch cream potatoes. Salt the boiling water. The fat must be smoking hot before the potatoes go in, not warm. Do not stir them for the first 20 minutes – let that crust form.
What to pour with it
With a Sunday roast chicken, McLaren Vale grenache. With steak, Barossa shiraz. With a glass of cold French 75 and a cheeseboard, a stand-alone snack at a long lunch.
Woodford Reserve Bourbon
An Old Fashioned with a Sunday roast where these potatoes belong.
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The recipe
Ingredients
Method
- Put the cut potatoes in a large pot of cold salted water. Bring to the boil, then simmer 10 minutes until a knife just goes through the edge. Do not overcook.
- Drain into a colander. Shake the colander hard for 20 seconds - the edges will roughen and look chalky. This is where the crunch comes from.
- Preheat oven to 220°C fan-forced. Put the duck fat in a heavy-based roasting tray and slide it into the oven for 10 minutes until smoking.
- Carefully tip the potatoes into the hot fat. Turn to coat. Add the bashed garlic cloves. Spread in a single layer.
- Roast 25 minutes without touching. Turn once, add the rosemary. Roast another 20 minutes until deep golden and crunchy.
- Lift out, drain on kitchen paper, toss with sea salt flakes and cracked pepper. Serve immediately.
Nutrition
Two things that go wrong
You skipped the boil-and-bash step.
Raw potatoes in fat just roast — you don’t get the crispy outside. The boil partly cooks them, the bash creates rough edges that go into the fat and crisp into the chips of paradise. Don’t shortcut.
Your fat wasn’t smoking hot.
Cool fat absorbs into the potato and gives you greasy, soft results. The duck fat needs to ripple and smoke before the potatoes go in. Heat the fat in the empty roasting tray in the oven for 10 minutes first.
Variations worth knowing
- Goose fat and rosemaryUse goose fat instead of duck — slightly milder, just as good. Add bashed garlic cloves and rosemary sprigs to the tray.
- Truffle salt finishHit the cooked potatoes with a generous dusting of truffle salt and a drizzle of truffle oil. Christmas-table indulgent.
- Smoked salt and chilliToss the cooked potatoes with smoked sea salt and a pinch of chilli flakes. Adds smoke without a smoker.
Leftovers and make ahead
Cold leftover roast potatoes the next morning, fried in a pan until heated through, with a fried egg on top. Best breakfast hash you’ll ever make. Refrigerate in a sealed container, eat within 3 days. Reheat at 220°C for 10 minutes if you want them crispy again.