Guest Post: Perfect Roasted Potatoes

Let me say, upfront, that I’m not an excellent cook. I have many faults in the kitchen, such as not reading recipes all the way through before beginning or substituting spices based on the letter they start with (seemed like a good idea at the time…). So I may not seem like the best source for absolutely perfect roasted potatoes. But I am here to tell you that I have the secret.

And I discovered it quite by accident!

Most recipes will tell you that you need to parboil your potatoes to get them perfectly roasted. I have no idea if that is true because frankly, that just sounds like extra work to me. I always skip extra work (hence not being the world’s best home cook…). In the past, my roasted potatoes were fine enough. But now they rock SO HARD! Read my tutorial below and you’ll discover why!

Perfect Roasted Potatoes

Ingredients you will need:

  • 1 sweet potato (trust me…throwing a sweet potato in the mix makes it all the better!)
  • 3 or 4 red potatoes
  • Italian seasoning (or whatever seasoning you like best)
  • olive oil
  • garlic salt
  • Reynolds aluminum foilingredients needed to make roasted potatoes

Wash and peel your potatoes. Then roughly chop them into bite sized pieces. Place all potato chunks in a large bowl.

cut up potatoes for roasted potatoes recipe

Add roughly a palm full of Italian seasoning. I don’t measure. Measuring takes extra work, and that’s not how I roll.

palm full of Italian seasoning for roasted potatoes

Now do the same thing with your garlic salt. Any type-A folks out there cringing over the lack of specific measurements? I’m actually type-A, myself, except for in the kitchen. Take a deep breath, and just go with it. You will be pleased with the end result, I promise!

palm full of garlic salt for roasted potatoes

After you have added the seasonings to the potato mix, it is time to add lots and lots of olive oil. I added 1/3 of a cup, but the main thing to remember is that your potatoes need to be generously coated. Mix everything up thoroughly.

cubed potato chunks with seasoning and olive oil

Now, here’s where the secret to perfect roasted potatoes lies: you need to let everything sit right in this bowl for a minimum of one hour. I recommend letting it sit for 3 or 4 hours if you can. I think the seasonings become stronger when they have time to mingle with the olive oil, and I also think some of that starchiness in the potatoes comes out during this time. But I’m not sure. I discovered this step a few months ago when I was trying to make these for lunch and then got distracted with the kiddos. I got to this step and then had to stop, so I decided to just make them 4 hours later for dinner. And they BLEW. MY. MIND.

When you are ready to do the roasting, make sure your oven is preheated to 400 degrees. Don’t put them in before the oven gets that hot. They really need that blast of heat from the start! Trust me! Also be sure to put them on a foil lined pan (you’ll thank me at clean up time) and spray the pan with something like Pam. Yes, even with all that olive oil, I still recommend this step. Also make sure that your pieces are not sitting on top of each other.

sweet potato and potato chunks for roasting

After they have been in the oven for 20 minutes, take them out and flip them all around.

flipping potatoes half way through roasting

Pop them back into the oven for another 20 minutes. The flip them again. Then they need one more round in the oven for 10 minutes. And this is what you will get after that final roasting session:

roasted potatoes

Oh, they are heaven, folks. They are a bit time intensive in that you have to babysit them a little once they are in the oven, but other than that, it is a very easy recipe, as long as you get started well in advance! I hope your family enjoys these as much as mine does! If you loved this recipe, would you consider pinning it on Pinterest or sharing it on Facebook so others can give it a try, too?

Tiffany Merritt is the blogger behind Stuff Parents Need, a website dedicated to sharing products and services that make life a little less hectic and a lot more fun for parents of young children. She gives away great prizes every week and keeps entries simple to make it easy to enter (and win!). Stop by and see if there’s anything you’d love to win for your family! Tiffany is also currently a finalist for the Reynolds Real Moms ambassador program. She’s sharing great tips and tricks on the Reynolds Facebook page every Wednesday for the next 6 weeks. She would be totally thrilled to earn your vote there!

You may also like

9 Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.