Try This: Salt-Roasted Potatoes

We've come across two recipes for salt-roasted potatoes in the past few days – is that enough to call it a trend? Maybe not, but it was enough to pique our interest and give it a try. Get our verdict, and a few tips, below.

The February issue of Better Homes & Gardens features a recipe for skillet salt-roasted potatoes. New potatoes are roasted whole on a bed of salt and fennel seeds in a cast iron skillet. And what's most intriguing – it's all done on the stove top.

This time of year, we're not shy about cranking up our oven, but we're always interested in recipes that adapt oven methods for the stove top and can be used when you don't want to heat up the whole kitchen – or if, perhaps, you don't have an oven at all.

Last week's episode of the Splendid Table featured a similar recipe – oven salt-roasted fingerlings served with crème fraïche, cracked coriander seeds, chives and butter. You can hardly go wrong with those ingredients!

We chose to go with the stove top method, using coriander seeds sprinkled on top of the salt. The tiny potatoes we used took about 40 minutes to fully roast over low heat in a covered cast iron skillet. We then drizzled them with olive oil and served with sour cream and a few spoonfuls of dukkah – an Egyptian mix of nuts and spices – made with Emily's basic recipe.

We didn't get much of the coriander flavor in the potatoes themselves, but the salt gave the potato skins a nice flavor without being overly salty. The skins stayed crisp while the insides were tender and creamy.

These recipes call for quite a bit of salt – about 2 cups. But it can be saved and used again for another round of salt roasting. We're excited to try this method with other vegetables!

Have you tried salt roasting?

Related: Egyptian Spice Mix: Dukkah

(Images: Joanna Miller)

Comments (11)

I have a friend who salt roasts a whole chicken. She uses, like 2 lbs of salt and roasts it in the oven. It's delicous, but I've never tried it. I am now planning on salt roasting potatoes this weekend though!

I wonder how this would work with other veggies if you had to chop them up. I'd think that, without the benefit of the impervious skin on the outside, the veg would get far too salty. Might have to experiment.

"You can't hardly go wrong"? So you're saying, you can really go wrong. ;)

Grammar nazi-ness aside, I saw that recipe in BH&G and it intrigued me. I don't have a cast iron skillet though. Would it work in any other pan, or does it need to be a heavy one?

In a restaurant, I had salmon baked on salt in a skillet and have done it at home with good results.

Thanks for catching that, Mrs.Mack. It's fixed now.

I did see another recipe – for fennel, I believe – that suggested wrapping fennel pieces in foil and tucking the packets into a bed of salt, which was roasted in the oven uncovered. So, if you're going to be using the oven, you might be able to get away with a thinner pan.

Coriander is a spice that benefits (as almost all do) by being ground, and heated in an oil or liquid. Fennel seeds can be toasted, and will give off an aroma, but I'm not sure that it would be absorbed by the potato.

I don't think this is any big deal, but in an old edition of Joy of Cooking, there's a recipe for cooking potatoes in rosin, which sounds so odd and yet wonderful.

http://www.hungrybrowser.com/phaedrus/m1217M07.htm

@GretaGrace: The salt didn't burn at all. Some of it hardened into small clumps.

I have also cooked salmon this way, it is delicious. I am going to try these potatoes tomorrow night, I can't wait!!
Thanks for sharing this idea.

When I bake small potatoes, I rub them in butter then roll them in sea salt. Perfect baked potatoes every time. They skins are so flavorful and crisp.