Roasted Potatoes Oreganatta

They look pretty good, but are they actually special?

Time: 1 Hour 15 minutes

Ingredient Availability: 5/5

Difficulty: 1/5

Roasted potatoes are such a great side dish that is typically very easy to make. This recipe adds a few steps, calling for you to coat the potatoes in bread crumbs in an attempt to make them more crispy. Let’s find out of it’s worth the extra effort.

Key Ingredients & Omissions:

None of the ingredients were difficult to find, so I used them all. I think the use of yellow potatoes is probably somewhat important, as they have a different starchiness to other potatoes. Other than that, I think you shouldn’t have any issues on the ingredient side.

Tools:

• Mandoline or Sharp Knife

Cooking Review:

Prep: 23 minutes

The prep for this recipe included zesting and juicing the lemons and grating the garlic. I also grated the cheese and chopped up an anchovy in this step.

Potatoes: 13 minutes

Next I sliced the potatoes. I used a mandoline, which made it easier to get consistent slices. However, mandolines are notoriously dangerous, so be careful if you decide to use one instead of knives. I combined the olive oil, garlic, salt, pepper, and lemon juice and tossed the potatoes in the mixture before arranging on two baking sheets.

Roasting: 23 minutes

I was only supposed to roast the potatoes for about 15 minutes. To be honest, I forgot to add the olive oil the first time I tossed the potatoes, so about 5 minutes into roasting, I took them out to coat them in olive oil before returning them to the oven. While the potatoes roasted, I combined the breadcrumb mixture in preparation for the next step.

Coating and Broiling: 21 minutes

After roasting the potatoes, I tossed the potatoes in the breadcrumbs and put them back onto the baking sheets in a single layer. The recipe says to broil them for 2-3 minutes to crisp them up, but I used my broiler on low and it took closet to 12 minutes to get some crispiness on them. Be sure to keep an eye on yours. After broiling, the potatoes are ready to be served.

Analysis:

The potatoes themselves aren’t crispy at all. Most of the slight crunch that there is comes from the bread crumbs. Given all of the seasonings in this recipe, I was really surprised by how light all of the flavors are. I can taste the lemon, smoked paprika, and a little of the oregano, but it’s not really enough to impress. I think it probably could have used more salt to amp up all of the flavors. Despite those complaints, they aren’t bad. They are just a little disappointing when I spent so much more effort when compared to roasted potatoes I would make without a recipe. I’m going to give this recipe a 6/10. I think you’re better off chopping or slicing your potatoes, tossing them with some olive oil and seasonings, and roasting them instead. But, if you did decide to make these, I don’t think you’d have something you wouldn’t want to eat.