hello this is chef john from food wishes dot-com with roasted smashed potatoes
that's right we're gonna smash and then roast potatoes which will create
something gorgeous and appearance that features the ultimate in potato recipe
texture the proverbial crispy and crunchy on the outside and yet soft and
fluffy in the middle and please do not confuse these with the other thing
people call smashed potatoes which are just mashed potatoes where people were
too lazy to peel the skins off alright I'm not a big fan of those unlike these
which I'm a huge fan of and what we'll need to get started is some medium sized
Yukon Gold or in my case yellowfin potatoes which of course we've watched
carefully because we're gonna eat this gun's
and what we'll do is add them to this pot along with some nice cold fresh
water and we will place those over high heat and also add a fairly generous
amount of salt alright that's about a third of a cup of kosher salt two about
three quarts of water which might seem like a lot to people that just add a
pinch but that really is one of the keys here and then what we'll do once this
comes up to a simmer is lower the heat to about medium-low and let these simmer
gently until they're tender and other than giving them the occasional stir
there's really not much else to do except wait for these to cook to the
perfect doneness which is just tender and of course we will test those with a
small sharp knife and while we definitely don't want these super soft
and falling apart we also don't want them undercooked and still firm
otherwise we're gonna have issues when we try to smash these and the last thing
you want when you're smashing something is issues so like I said we will go
until these are just tender at which point we'll drain them very well and
then as soon as they're cool enough to handle or before well go ahead and
transfer them onto a sheet pan which will allow them to cool a lot faster
alright because we want these to cool all the way down to room temp before we
refrigerate them and while we're waiting for that to happen
I'd like to do one optional step which is go around the side of each potato
with a sharp knife making very shallow cuts through the skin like an eighth of
an inch deep all right maybe like four or five on each potato and the reason I
like to do this is because potato skins are very tough and sometimes when you
smash them all this skin will sort of stay together on one
side and all the fluffy potato from the inside will kind of smoosh out the other
side so by making these cuts once these are smashed that skin will split a
little more uniformly and will hopefully have the same amount of skin all the way
around right so that's my thought process here and it may or may not make
any huge difference but regardless once those potatoes of
room temp we'll go ahead and pop them in the fridge until thoroughly thoroughly
chilled okay overnight is best but they must be totally cold before we smash
them and roast em and then the only other thing we're gonna have to prep
here is our garlic herb butter which will do by melting a stick of butter
over medium heat along with some fresh rosemary and thyme and a whole bunch of
thickly sliced garlic and by the way you can use chopped if you want but we're
actually gonna use that sliced garlic as a garnish later and I think it's gonna
look a lot nicer if we do it like this and then all we're gonna do here is cook
this stirring until that garlic just starts to turn translucent and softens
up okay we are gonna cook it a little more later but for this stage all we're
doing is infusing the butter with this garlic and herb and the garlic shouldn't
really take on any color at this point so what we'll do when it looks like this
is simply turn off the heat and reserve until needed
and then once that's set we can pull our cold potatoes out of the fridge and get
to smash in but before that what we'll do is prep a pan which as you can see
I've lined with a Silpat and we'll go ahead and generously butter that all
over as in very very generously and by the way I should mention that these will
cook and get crispy or faster if you just use a bare metal pan or a foil pan
all right so this setup will take a little longer but the advantage is you
don't have to flip them halfway through the roasting but anyway once that set we
can pull our cold potatoes out of the fridge and get to Smashing which I like
to do between some plastic using some type of flat heavy object and I got a
little excited on this first one and did it too thin but that's okay as long as
it doesn't fall apart it'll still work so we'll want to do the next one a
little thicker but anyway one smash we'll go ahead and season the top with
salt pepper and cayenne and I carefully flip it over and do the same to the
other side at which point we will transfer that onto our pan and please
note for filming purposes I'm only doing one pan here
but in real life you'll probably use a couple pans making sure to spread them
out nice and evenly so they're not overlapping alright so let's try that
again only this time we won't smash it quite as then okay I'd say about a
half-inch thick is perfect and by the way some people like to do these all
once by pressing down on the top with another sheet pan but personally I
prefer to do them one at a time and not just because I'm paid by the hour all
right I think we have a little more control plus these only take a few
seconds anyway and we can make sure they're seasoned properly but anyway if
you want to do them all once go ahead I mean you are for all the Steve Nash of
how you smash and then what we'll do once our potatoes have been smashed
seasoned damp and let's go ahead and drizzle on and brush over a ton of our
garlic infused butter all right don't be shy we want a lot of butter so these get
nice and crispy and crusty and that's it once these have been severely buttered
we'll go ahead and maybe sprinkle a little more seasoning over the top if we
feel the need at which point these are ready to
transfer into the center of a 450 degree oven for about 35 to 45 minutes or until
very well browned and extremely crusty and while we're waiting what we can do
is put that garlic in there back on the stove over like medium-low heat and cook
it until those garlic cloves start to caramelize and turn a nice light shade
of golden brown okay we don't want to go too dark so I'm gonna turn off the heat
when they look a little something like this
and then what we'll do once our potatoes are done is spoon this garlic over the
top to create a beautiful and extremely delicious garnish so this step is
optional but also mandatory and that's it once our potatoes have cooked long
enough we'll go ahead and pull them out and not only should they look stunningly
beautiful they should sound very crispy and crunchy
oh yeah Fork don't lie and if everything's gone according to plan the
bottom should be just as crusty and browned as the tops and we'll go ahead
and serve immediately transferring those on to some kind of warm platter at which
point we'll go ahead and spoon over those soft and sweet garlic slices or
garlic confit if you like things that sound French
and that's it once garlic I went ahead and finish off with some freshly snipped
chives and that my friends is just an amazing possibly perfect platter of
potatoes whether you serve those as is or the side of sour cream and chives
like I'm doing here and I think one reason I love this technique so much is
that it's sort of like eating all my favorite potato recipes at once okay
with that beautiful buttery crusty exterior surrounding that soft light
fluffy interior it's sort of like home fries meets mashed potatoes meets french
fries meets potato pancakes only better and of course herb infused butter along
with soft sweet sticky slices of garlic don't hurt either and if you're thinking
sure that looks delicious on that plate all by itself but what it also worked
next to some roasted turkey smothered in gravy well yes
yes it will it will work very well and by the way that turkey our scene was a
little bit of an experiment I did cooking a turkey upside down very
quickly in a very hot oven ok believe it or not I cooked like a 16 pound bird in
just about two hours and it actually came out surprisingly nice so stay tuned
for that little adventure but in the meantime I really do hope you give these
amazing roasted smashed potatoes a try soon so please follow the links below to
get the ingredient amounts a printable written recipe in much more info as
usual and as always and you
you