These potatoes were a HUGE hit with the kids! So much so that I had to hide the evidence that these were even made so my husband wouldn’t know what he missed…
This also another “not-really-a-recipe-recipe” – super easy, hard to mess up. We are Irish so potatoes are their own food group in our house. We probably eat potatoes every day. We get a lot of potatoes from local farms around Charlotte but we even grow our own potatoes in three different gardens around our backyard. Potatoes are a forgiving crop – and, since my kiddos can be a little bit anxious to harvest the potatoes, we often get a lot of super cute baby potatoes. This recipe is perfect for those small ones!
I made a little bit of garlic aioli to have with my roasted “smashed” potatoes, the boys preferred ketchup, and the girls were content to snack on the potatoes as soon as they came out of the oven … naked. These were intended to be a side dish with our meal but they ended up being eaten as an appetizer – they were just too delicious to wait for dinner!
Ingredients:
2 lbs or so baby potatoes
Olive oil
Sea salt
Directions:
1. Clean potatoes if necessary, remove any eyes or funny spots.
 |
| Cooking the potatoes … round 1. |
2. Drop into a pot of cold, salted water. Bring to a boil and let the potatoes cook for about 20 minutes until they are fork soft – but definitely not falling apart.
 |
| Drain the potatoes. |
3. Drain the potatoes and set aside on a kitchen towel.
 |
| Lay the potatoes on a kitchen towel. |
4. “SMASH” time… Put the potatoes, one at a time, under the towel. Using any handy kitchen utensil, flatten the potato. I used an ice cream scoop – it worked great!
 |
| Put the potato between 2 layers of towel and flatten. |
5. Line a cookie sheet with foil and spray with cooking spray. Gently transfer the potatoes, one at a time – careful not to let the potatoes fall apart – to the greased cookie sheet.
 |
| Olive oil and a silicon brush … |
6. Pour some olive oil onto a plate or a small bowl. Using a brush, gently brush the potatoes with olive oil. Sprinkle with sea salt.
7. Cook in an oven preheated to 350 degrees for 30 to 40 minutes. Turn potatoes over after about 15 minutes. You want them to be nice and crispy… remove from the oven and serve! These roasted “smashed” potatoes were so delicious and eaten so quickly that I never snapped a shot of the finished product! You’ll have to trust me… they came out great!
Possibly useful information … Whenever you are cooking potatoes on the stove, you always want to start them in COLD water. An easy way to remember if the water needs to be COLD or HOT is to follow this rule of thumb: Any vegetable grown UNDERGROUND (think potatoes, beets, turnips) needs to be put in COLD water to start off the cooking process and any vegetable that grows ABOVE GROUND (think corn, tomatoes) needs to be dropped into a pot of HOT or BOILING water to begin.
