Roasted Potatoes

As you might remember from my cauliflower post, I’m drawn to vegetables in bright colors. So recently when I was at Trader Joe’s I bought their potato medley. The one pound bag has a mix of gold, red, and purple potatoes. How can I resist more purple vegetables? Since they were so pretty, I didn’t want to do anything crazy with them, I wanted to let their different colors and flavors stand out.  I decided the best decision was to season them, roast them, and serve them as a dinner side.

Let me tell you, this recipe is so darn easy. In my opinion, it’s barely cooking. And I’m not saying that in a condescending, “you aren’t cooking!” way. I mean, it’s barely cooking because it takes so little commitment. The recipes takes few ingredients, few dishes, and little technique. If you’re someone who thinks they can’t cook or don’t know how to cook, then this simple recipe is for you. This is really straightforward. Once you put it in the oven you can go read a book, watch TV, and hang out. And when it’s done cooking, you’ve made something great that you can share with people you like. Just think, if someone asks you to make a side for a party, boom you got it. If you want to contribute to Thanksgiving dinner, this will nail it. If you buy an already made rotisserie chicken from the grocery story, add this and you’ve got yourself a great homemade meal.

Also, if you’re intimidated by purple potatoes you can do this recipe with any kind of potato really – Yukon Gold, Red, Fingerling. Whatever you got, you can do it.

Ingredients:

olive oil

1 pound potatoes

salt

pepper

garlic powder or minced garlic (optional)

rosemary – dried or fresh (optional)

Directions:

1. Heat the oven to 400°.

2. Scrub the potatoes clean. Peel the potatoes if you want to. Cut them into even sizes. I did quarters, but you could do halves. You want all the pieces to be about the same size.

3. Take some olive oil and grease the bottom of a rimmed baking sheet or casserole dish.

4. Put the cut potatoes in your greased dish. Sprinkle them with salt and pepper. You pretty much can’t over do it. Just sprinkle across so you can see some granules on each potato. If you’re using garlic or rosemary sprinkle this on too.

5. Sprinkle the potatoes with olive oil. This doesn’t have to be perfect, just flick it around so a lot of potatoes have oil on it.

6. Take a spoon and mix this whole thing up. This way you’re getting oil and seasoning evenly mixed.

7. Try as best you can to have the potatoes evenly laid on the dish and not crowding each other too much. I didn’t do a good job of this, but if you give them more space they’ll cook more evenly and quickly.

8. Put in the oven. Cook for 20 minutes. Stir. Cook for 20 minutes.

9. Potatoes are done when they are a little wrinkly and crispy looking. A fork should easily poke into the potato. If they aren’t ready after 40 minutes keep cooking until they are tender.

This doesn’t look much different from the first picture, but it’s a little wrinkly, right?

Messy Level

Clean, clean, clean!!! You need a knife, a cutting board, and a dish. This doesn’t make any mess at all really. It’s so darn easy!