To think roast potatoes are much nicer not par boiled

[user1484493755]

I've always cooked roast potatoes by soaking them in cold water, drying them and putting them straight into hot fat to roast. The resulting roast potato is absolutely delicious.

I found it that technically you're supposed to par boil them and then put them in the fat. I tried it and I just don't think the potato tastes as good this way. The potato loses flavour as it's been boiled and the skin is hard and soaks up too much fat.

Is this an horrendous opinions that I have?

My grandfather was a chef at a top restaurant and always taught me to roast potatoes without par boiling them first.

How do you rough up the edges if you don't par boil? I also add flour before shaking them up so they get stickier and attract more lovely goose fat to stick to them.....yum.

The non parboiled roasties have a crispy outside and to me they are just fab, it is an individual thing. I only parboil and par roast for the freezer, as you cannot freeze raw spuds.

I know I may be flamed for this, but honestly there is so much stuff about the aspirational crispy kind that everyone is hankering after, shake the pot, use flour, garlic, polenta and so on! Why would you go to such flippin bother?

Still each to their own. I couldn't be assed doing all that faff when the raw roasted spuds are just to my taste.

I also find that unless you get the parboil timing JUST RIGHT, the resulting roasties can be very soft or something. Probably just me being a lazy fekker tho and not caring!

I do the Jamie Oliver squashy thing with a potato masher with parboiled spuds and that works quite well to get them crispy. Agree you can over boil them.

My mum used to peel, chop and bung them straight into lard and cook them for about an hour.
This left you with a spud with a skin like leather and the slight risk it was underdone in the middle. I remember many Sunday roasts where I was desperately trying to get into the potato and failing.
I parboil and if I'm organised I do it early enough that the potatoes have a chance to cool off first. I find giving them a quick coating of gram flour gives them a lovely flaky crunch! They also need less time in the oven, so less chance of greasy leatheryness.
For Christmas I parboil the day before and store them in the fridge overnight with a coating of oil on them. Properly fridge cold spuds straight into very hot goose fat makes for a lovely crunchy roastie!
Btw, maris pipers are the best.

Agree about Maris pipers.