The potato is a true Christmas dinner staple. Crispy on the outside and fluffy on the inside, they’re a certified festive crowd-pleaser.
Everyone knows that the crunchier potatoes are, the better they taste. Nothing is more disappointing than plunging your fork into a soggy spud that lacks some extra bite.
That's why Trends Writer Jacob Rawley decided to try a Christmas potato recipe that claims to be the crispiest in the world. Here's how he got on...
With the festive season in full swing and my diet having gone all the way out of the window, I figured that I may as well semi-justify my near constant snacking by getting a story out of it.
I've also been spending a good amount of time mindlessly scrolling through social media, looking at recipes and thinking "that'd be cool", then immediately forgetting about them two minutes later.
So, I figured it might be worth giving one of these viral recipes a go. There are loads of Christmas feasts popping up online and a series that caught my eye was TikTok user and Michelin trained chef Poppy O’Toole's "12 Days of Christmas Potatoes".
Poppy calls herself the "Potato Queen", and out of her 12 potato-cooking recipes, one really appealed to me for its simplicity - her crispy crunchy cubes.
Poppy, who posts under @poppycooks on TikTok, said that these little cubes "might possibly be the crunchiest potatoes in the world." So, here's how my attempt went...
The process
For starters, here's what I was supposed to use to make the potato cubes:
- x2 baking potatoes
- x1 large garlic clove
- table salt
- parmesan cheese
- rosemary
As instructed by Poppy's clip, I diced my potatoes up into small cubes and let them boil with "a load of salt in there."
I then chopped the top of the garlic clove and popped it in some tinfoil with olive oil, salt and rosemary.
Then once the potatoes were sliding off my fork I drained the boiling water, let them steam dry and chucked them into my preheated oven dish alongside the head of garlic in its foil.
I was feeling a bit adventurous so chucked some paprika on the potatoes too. Then it was just a waiting game.
As Poppy says: "leave them in the oven for half an hour, give them a toss, and then leave them in the oven for another 20 minutes."
Now as you can probably tell with my impromptu paprika, I'm often guilty of doing my own thing and spoiling a good meal.
That is in large part why I have been enjoying this series, the recipes are so simple that even I - a man with a fish-like attention span - can follow them without going all the way off the rails.
Anyways, the chopping and boiling of the potatoes took about 15 minutes, I sorted out the garlic while the potatoes were on the hob, and then it was just over 50 minutes total in the oven.
So after an hour and a bit, they were all but ready to go, just squeeze the cloves out of the head of garlic, sprinkle on the parmesan, mix it all together and you're good to go.
Verdict
My thoughts on this fairly quick recipe; easy to make. Usually the end product and my end product look nothing alike, but I think it's gone fairly well here.
As for the taste, I'll be honest, I was going to save half for my partner but all of the cubes were gone in a flash.
They were really, really crunchy. I thought they'd be like wedges but they were more like Croutons with a fluffy inside.
In terms of things that could have gone better, the garlic and parmesan didn't really stick to the potato cubes, so I had to scoop it all up while eating them. Might have to be a bit more generous with the olive oil next time.
I'll for sure be making these again, and I'll be keeping this recipe up my sleeve in the off chance that mum needs help with the Christmas dinner this year.
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