Our Best Roast Potato Recipe - crispy!

No Sunday Roast dinner - be it beef, pork, lamb or chicken is complete with the perfect crispy roast potato ( or ’spud’ as the British say). So first, choose your potato:

Best potatoes for roasting are floury ones such as a Russet or King Edward or Maris Piper rather than the more waxier varieties.

Parboil for around 5 minutes ( depends how large you cut them up after peeling) make sure all the water is poured away and let them stand for a while so that even more water is release, in the form of steam.

Then the all important ’shake’ to fluff the outsides for a crispy, crunchy skin. I also add some seasoned flour to the potatoes before shaking them and a friend of mine swears by adding ground tapioca at this stage.

Rather than using lard, butter or oil I prefer to use goose or duck fat for a superior tasting roast potato. If cooking to go with an al fresco lunch I’d more likely use olive oil and throw in a handful of chopped fresh rosemary halfway through the roasting process.

As in the video do make sure your oil or fat is nice and hot before adding the fluffed up and seasoned spuds! Turn in the oven as often as required for a nice all over crispiness, avoid cooking in the same dish as the meat as the liquid released from the joint will cause them to boil rather than roast.

When Is A Potato Not A Potato

Regular visitors will know that this blog has a tendency to veer away from domestic staff issues per se and focus, instead, on culinary issues and the occassional vino diversion.

This post is no exception. We were recently contacted by those admirable folks at the Bowmore Malt Whisky Distillery on the Isle Of Islay off the Scottish Coast and asked to check out their ‘The Bowmore Way’ videos.



Their clever idea was to have a selection of videos featuring the ‘right’ way of doing a task of any kind; from choosing an engagement ring to shining a shoe. Obviously this admirable idea is totally in tune with the Butler Bureau ethic and we’ve already featured a couple on the main site, with more to follow:

1) ‘Bulling’ a shoe shine
2) How to select a cigar
3) How to avoid garlic breath

Here’s one we also like but have yet to publish on the main site. It’s about how to make a potato look like a mushroom. A bit of fun to garnish your next gourmet offering perhaps?

We’re looking forward to adding some more Bowmore Way videos here soon.