3 Comments to 'Roast Chicken'

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1. gaile said,
   January 17th, 2011 at 9:43 pm

   Hi I’ve been reading for a long time, and would LOVE to know how you get your potatoes so crispy and brown with your chicken.

2. Stephen said,
   January 18th, 2011 at 1:51 pm

   Hi Gaile, we usually do our potatoes similar to the recipe that we wrote up here: http://dinnerdiary.org/2009/02/01/roast-chicken-ballotine-and-perfect-roast-potatoes/ We should have linked to it, sorry.

   Don’t worry if you don’t have goose fat though, you can do it without and they still turn out really well. It did take several attempts to get them right, but now we mostly manage to be fairly consistent with them.

   Good luck!

3. Kerri said,
   January 18th, 2011 at 3:33 pm

   There’s some things missing from that original post I think:

   I don’t think it matters too much if you don’t have time to leave the potatoes to dry out. We don’t always and generally the potatoes don’t suffer too much.

   Good potatoes are essential, we prefer maris piper or desiree. Don’t try and get good roast potatoes from loose baking potatoes (tempting if you’re only cooking for a small number and don’t want to buy a huge bag) or from those bags of “white potatoes” because they just don’t have the right texture.

   Re. the fat, I would say add more fat initially than you think you’ll need. The most important thing when trying to achieve crispy roast potatoes (I think) is ensuring they’re all well coated in hot oil when they go into the pan. Once you’ve coated them then remove the excess oil with some kitchen paper. You don’t want to get the potatoes into the dish and then realise you don’t have enough oil and have to add cold oil. It is important to remove the excess oil, you want a little surplus in the dish but not so much that the potatoes are sitting in rivers of oil.

   We also put the roasting dish on the hob and turn the flame on underneath it while putting the potaotes into dish. Keep the flame lit until the potaotes are all well coated in oil.

   I noticed that you said “how you get your potatoes so crispy and brown with your chicken” so am wondering if you usually cook your potatoes alongside the meat – wo do sometimes with beef but not with chicken. The chicken lets too much oil and water and the potatoes won’t ever crisp up in those circumstances.

   Finally, the temperature. We normally cook roast potatoes at 180 degrees and they are generally ready at the same time as the meat (once you’ve allowed for resting). It’s fine to start at a lower temperature though (if you’re cooking something like a slow roast lamb shoulder) and then turn the potatoes up for the last half hour while the meat rests. Conversely, if the potatoes are ready before the meat then remove them from the oven and leave them on the side. Don’t put them in a warm oven or leave them in an oven that’s had the temperature turned down because they’ll go soggy. Just leave them out and let the gravy warm them up at the table.

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