I continue my quest to find the perfect ingredient to achieve the ultimate roast potato, and this time I’ve gone back to basics. Having previously tried out of the box ingredients like mayonnaise and clotted cream, I tested out a recipe by a recipe developer who claims it’s all about the oil.
TikTok creator Amy Sheppard recently shared her roast potatoes recipe where she told her followers to forget about goose fat and such like. Instead of using a singular oil in her recipe, Amy claimed that the best results come from a mixture of two. She uses a blend of half vegetable oil and half olive oil.
In her TikTok video, Amy said: “Forget about goose fat! Just use 50/50 vegetable oil and olive oil. “Heat a good couple of glugs of oil in a thin bottomed roasting tin until hot. Tip in the potatoes, turn them over until coated.”
Near enough for every roast dinner, my mum or I would make roast potatoes using vegetable oil. It was only when Christmas would come around that Mum would switch it up and use something a little bit more luxurious. This would usually be goose fat.
Using oil also requires you to use a higher oven temperature at 220℃ rather than 200℃. I still preheated the roasting tin in the oven for around ten to 15 minutes before adding the oil.
It’s really important to ensure that the oil is heated up, otherwise you’ll be left greasy spuds without any resemblance of a crazy.
The roast potatoes’ crust resembled closely what I remember from spuds growing up. Instead of having a caramelised coating, the oil creates a more subtle crust.
You know it’s there when you bite into them, but you’d be forgiven for thinking the oil hadn’t worked. The mixture of oil, personally, I don’t think outperformed using only one oil.
If anything, I don’t think it makes a difference at all. I can’t quite see the result that was desired.
Despite coating the potatoes liberally in the hot oil and turning them over in the pan, the roast left a lot to be desired. The oil resulted in a very uneven roast, rendering about half of the potatoes a golden yellow rather than golden brown.
However, for all that said about the potatoes’ mediocre colour, using oil doesn’t overpower the flavour of a potato, but helps to keep it as neutral as possible. You get the perfect base to smother whatever flavour you want on the spuds.
Even with a sprinkling of salt, it only emphasises the flavour of the potato itself. In comparison, the clotted cream made the roast potatoes slightly too sickly for me, so I’d rather opt for oil instead.
If your aim is to achieve a more even crisp and crunch on all of the potatoes, I’d avoid using oil. Using an ingredient such as mayonnaise can help achieve that desired while also adding an indulgent flavour without becoming too sickly.
Oil-roasted potatoes remind me of the ones I grew up with, so maybe I have a nostalgic tether to them. However, the crust won’t be to everyone’s taste.
Personally, I don’t think the mix of two oils does anything magical to the roast potatoes. Plus, who can afford bottles and bottles of olive oil in this current climate?