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)