Roast potatoes with Heston Blumenthal | FT Globetrotter

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I'm Heston, Heston Blumenthal. And I'm here at my restaurant, Dinner, in London, with Adam and the team, who you can see behind me.

In 1992, I had read a book written by an American guy called On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen. And in that book, he said - he was talking about cooking steak - that browning the meat doesn't keep in the juices. That's like finding out Father Christmas isn't real. So once I discovered this fact that I thought was sacrosanct in cooking, I found that to be false. I thought, what other things have I been learning about that aren't real?

So in the case of potatoes, I first looked at chips. The classic British fish and chips, the chips are soggy. And I wondered why chips would go soggy. And one of my mates and I are going out to the pub. After half a dozen pints, if you found them, if they're lucky, they'll have some funny, drunken punch up or something. My problem is, how do you get a chip to be really light and fluffy on the inside and crispy on the outside? Very good, a life lesson, really.

I had the idea of doing something with the roast potato that I'd had in my head for a few years. I suppose I'd say my obsession began like most other peoples, Sunday roast. Still, to this day, most people say it's their mum's or their grandmother's potatoes are the best. So I had that growing up. I'd loved roast potatoes since I was a kid.

When you make a roast, you've got your roast meat, green veg, carrots, cauliflower, whatever. All of those can basically be cooked in advance and, say, left to sit for an hour or so, so you can put the potatoes in. So the potatoes don't wait for anyone. When they're ready, they're ready. So you have to make everything else be ready at the same time as the potato.

Hi, my name is Adam. I'm the head chef here at Dinner by Heston. Today, we're going through Heston's classic triple-cooked roasty. So, obviously, we start off with the most important ingredient, which is the potato. So we use Agria potatoes here in the restaurant. Well, they're a starchy potato. But they have a lower water content than other potatoes.

And in the process what we're trying to do is draw out as much moisture as possible, and then end up having the really crispy potatoes. So if we start off with a potato that's got a lower water content, it's starting to do some of the job for us. We've just peeled the potatoes. As we peel them, we leave all the rough edges.

We make sure not to around them off. We keep all these sharp edges because all the edges start to crack. That gets more oil in. And then they roast up and go extra crispy at the end. So all the little, sharp edges are the best bit. So once we peel them, we're just going to cut them, ready to boil. We don't want to cut the potatoes too small because, in the process, they're going to ruffle up the edges.

And if we start too small you end up with a tiny potato at the end. So you need to start a little bit bigger. So this is the kind of size we're looking for, I would say, kind of, a medium-sized potato. As you can see, they're all a roughly consistent size, which means that, throughout the process, we don't have some that are raw and some that are overcooked.

So once we've got all the potatoes cut, the next stage is obviously the boiling. So we've got a pan here with just some cold water. And we've added salt into that. So it's quite heavily-seasoned water. So we start the seasoning process of the potato right from the beginning.

We just put those potatoes into the cold water with the salt. And, now, we're turning it onto a high heat. We want to bring it up to the boil as quickly as possible. Once they come up to the boil we're just going to gently simmer them for about 15 to 20 minutes until they're almost falling apart.

Every Christmas, I get asked about Christmas dinner. So my answer is, don't try to do too many things. If you're having turkey, you can cook your turkey first. Let it sit. It'll rest. If you've got green beans or cabbage or carrots, you cook them all in advance. Then they're just ready to be reheated. The potatoes go in anywhere between, around about an hour and 10, an hour and 20 minutes.

When you think they're ready, try and get a bit of gut strength and leave them in for five to 10 minutes after you want to take them - longer than you want to take them out. So, then, they come out. Everything gets reheated. So everything has been built for the potato.

Any root vegetable, anything grown on the ground, should always start in cold water. Anything that's grown above ground, you can start in boiling water. Also, the cold water, as it comes up to temperature, a lot of the last impurities from the potato will rise at the top. And we're just going to skim those off. We want to make sure we do this before the potatoes start boiling. If it starts boiling then the boil can actually roll that starch back into the water.

So we want to make sure we take all that off before the full boil starts. So, now, they've just come up to the boil. We're just going to turn it down to a medium-high heat to start the cooking process. So we just need to make sure, throughout the cooking process, we're stirring them every couple of minutes. This really helps with starting to break up the edges as they cook.

So you can see, because of all the stirring, you can start to see the cracks appear on the outside. And that's what we're looking for. But we want them everywhere. We're going to keep stirring because we want more of those. And we want them on every edge and on every crack. I think the boiling is a crucial stage.

I think a lot of people don't boil them enough. So they do, a kind of, a par boil, or a five minutes in the water. That leaves a lot of the moisture so that then when you go to roast them, all of that moisture will push its way out to the outside of the potato. And it will start making them go soggy. And you'll lose that really crispy potato.

Some people try and fix this by coating in flour or cornflour to try and get crispy edges. But if you just cook the potato a little bit further, you don't need to use any flour or extras. So right now the potato has already come out. We finished with this. Rack, ready. So, with the potatoes, you can see how it's really starting to ruffle up. The way to check if it's ready is if you push really hard, you should be able to really break the potato. So that means we know that it's ready to come out.

So we're just going to take them out really gently. And you can see, on the edges here, all the cracks we have, which are going to be perfect for the next stage, which is the first fry. So, now, these are out. We're going to pop them in the fridge or blast chiller. All the steam you can see coming off now. We want to get rid of all of that. So then, once they're chilled we're going to put them in the fryer.

So, now, we've got the potatoes fully cold. We're ready for the next stage, which is the first fry. So we have the fryer set here to 135 degrees. And we have a combination of a neutral oil and beef fat. And we're going to fry these for about 13 to 14 minutes on the low temperature. All these little, small bits, you can put in as well because they end up going even extra crispy, or they can be a little snack along the way for the chef.

So, then, we just drop these down into the fryer, as I said, for about 13, 14 minutes. If you're doing this at home and you don't have a fryer, what you can do is just turn your oven up nice and hot. Make sure you put a generous amount of the fat or oil in the tray.

And you can kind of fry or roast them in the oven. So, then, these have been fried for about 13 minutes. Now, they're ready to come out back onto the cooling rack. They're going to go back into the fridge until they're cold, ready for the second fry.

So, now we have the potatoes fully cold after the second fry. All that moisture has come out. So we're ready for the final fry. So we turn the fryer up to 185 degrees. And we're going to put the potatoes back into the fryer for the last, final fry, just to get really, really crispy. And they take about five to six minutes.

So, then, these are the finished potatoes. In here, we have a little bit of beef fat. So when we prepare the beef ready for roasting we trim off all the excess fat. We render it down. And then we've infused that with some garlic, thyme, and rosemary. And then we're just going to drizzle that on the potatoes to finish.

And that gives it that really nice roast herb potato flavour. We finish with a little bit of sea salt. And then we transfer them into the bowl. So, then, these are all the extra crispy edges we were looking for from all the cook. So, then, these are the finished triple-cooked roast potatoes, ready to serve.

How should a roast potato make you feel? Very happy, light, fluffy, golden, glass-like crunch, crisp, and really juicy. I'm not boring you yet, am I? Honest. I start to bore myself. It's like, Heston, get a life. Maybe I should have gone out and eaten all those kebabs.