Crispy Roasted Fingerling Potatoes Recipe - Savory Nothings (2024)

FAQs

Why do my potatoes never get crispy? ›

This sure sounds a lot like potatoes that have been stored too long, in too cold of an environment before cooking. When potatoes are held below 41°F for too long a period, the starches convert to sugar and it changes the cooking chemistry.

Do I have to boil potatoes before roasting? Not necessary but this can help get the perfect consistency and crispiness. Make sure you boil them but leave them a bit al dente and they will crisp up perfectly in the oven.

Directions. Melt the butter in a Dutch oven or large heavy-bottomed pot. Add the whole potatoes, salt, and pepper, and toss well. Cover the pot tightly and cook over low heat for 20 to 30 minutes, until the potatoes are just tender when tested with a small knife.

Soaking potatoes in water helps remove excess starch. Excess starch can inhibit the potatoes from cooking evenly as well as creating a gummy or sticky texture on the outside of your potatoes. Cold water is used because hot water would react with the starch activating it, making it harder to separate from the potatoes.

Ovens offer the quintessential dry heat mechanism that gives roast potatoes their characteristic crispiness. However, dry heat is only one contributing factor. So if your potatoes aren't crisping in the oven, the problem likely lies in how you place them on the baking sheet.

Parboiling the potatoes is a good start, but if they're not getting crispy during roasting your temperature isn't high enough or there's too much moisture.

The potatoes cook on the inside when you parboil, so the baking time is basically crisping them up to perfection, which we do at a high oven temperature. If the potatoes are raw, when you use a high temperature, the outside of the potatoes will burn before the inside cooks.

When the corn starch comes into contact with the hot oil, it forms a barrier that traps moisture within the potato while also developing a crunchy crust. This results in fries that are both tender on the inside and crispy on the outside, mimicking the texture of fries you might find in restaurants.

Neutral, low-cost oil such as vegetable oil, canola oil, safflower oil, peanut oil, corn oil, coconut oil, avocado oil, etc., work well for roasting. These oils have a high smoke point, allowing the potatoes to get hotter without imparting off flavors.

Like other waxy potatoes, fingerlings have a low starch content. They roast up buttery and creamy. This makes them different from russet potatoes, whose drier, starchier texture works well for Air Fryer French Fries and Crock Pot Baked Potatoes.

What are the best tasting fingerling potatoes? ›

Russian Banana – The superstar of the fingerlings and a favorite among chefs heralded for their excellent flavor and versatility. Yellow, banana-shaped, waxy-type tubers with firm texture great baked, boiled and steamed. From the Baltic Region of Europe/Asia has a rich and buttery taste.

Fingerling Potatoes - Fingerling potatoes have a small, tubular shape and have a variety of skin and flesh characteristics. New Potatoes - New potatoes are young potatoes that have been harvested early. They have thin, delicate skin and creamy flesh. Also called baby potatoes, they come in a variety of colors.

The reason you put potatoes in water is to keep them from turning grey while you cut the rest of the potatoes. That's the only reason. In fact, if you are roasting them in the oven, you want less water, not more, so you get a nice crisp crust on each piece.

"Placing [peeled and cut] potatoes in water helps prevent oxidation, which turns their exposed flesh brown," says Ronna Welsh, the author of The Nimble Cook and the owner and chef instructor at Purple Kale Kitchenworks in Brooklyn, N.Y. While oxidation won't make the potatoes unsafe to eat, it does change their flavor.

Roasting potatoes:

Cover a baking sheet with parchment paper or aluminum foil and spread potatoes in one even layer, being careful not to overcrowd them. (Note: parchment paper is better to prevent sticking and aluminum foil yields crispier results but it does need to be lightly greased and may still stick.)

In the anomaly, very-high solid potato little water resides within, hence nothing to permeate around or within the solids' cells to cook the potato, no matter how long exposed to surrounding, external heat medium such as baking or boiling - explaining the hard or crunchy potatoes texture described.

If they are still not crispy you might have skipped a step or you might not have let them cool down sufficiently. Make sure to cool them in a single even layer and also make sure that the oil has the right temperature. Or maybe you've used the wrong potatoes to make them.

Rough or scaly skin on potatoes is common with potatoes that have been overwatered. You're familiar with the eyes on potato skins, but the skin on a potato also has pores, called lenticels. These lenticels can swell, and the skin can blister when the growing conditions are kept wet.

If a potato is stored without humidity it will dry up (shrivel) over a period of time because it is losing moisture.