Roast potatoes are crispier if you coat them in unexpected ingredient
Now that temperatures across Britain finally appear to be dropping slightly, it's an ideal moment to indulge yourself and your loved ones with a traditional roast dinner.
Many households may have abandoned the Sunday ritual during recent scorching heatwaves to escape a sweltering oven, but conditions are now sufficiently mild to reinstate the custom.
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With this in mind, you might wish to experiment with one chef's method for achieving perfectly crispy roast potatoes using an ingredient you probably wouldn't anticipate.
Poppy O'Toole (recognised online as Poppy Cooks) is an English chef, internet personality, and author widely acclaimed as the "Potato Queen".
Following a decade working in fine-dining and Michelin-starred establishments, she achieved widespread recognition by sharing approachable, carbohydrate-rich comfort food across social media platforms.
Posting to her Instagram account, which commands 1.4million followers, Poppy, 32, revealed in a reel: "So I saw you can cook roast potatoes with clotted cream, and I have to give it a go."
Displaying the finished result first, she remarked that the caramelisation achieved on the roast potatoes through this technique is "phenomenal".
Elaborating on their appearance, she continued: "Beautiful colour, and a super glisten crispiness."
Proceeding to sample the potatoes, she opted to dip them in the clotted cream, acknowledging it 'could be a step too far'. Nevertheless, she then remarked: "It's only like having a scone, isn't it?"
Poppy subsequently demonstrated the preparation method, noting she had created numerous potato recipes throughout her career and this ranked among the "weirdest" ones. "I just don't know how I feel about it," she admitted.
To begin, she sliced the potatoes into quarters (subject to their size) and placed them into a pan of cold, heavily salted water, which she describes as "key" when cooking anything from the ground.
Having boiled the potatoes for approximately 15 minutes until they were "fork tender", she drained them and left them to steam dry — an "important step" according to Poppy, particularly when preparing roast potatoes.
To achieve this, she placed them in a colander positioned over the pan used to boil them, then draped a clean tea towel over the top. She advised leaving the potatoes to steam dry for 5-10 minutes, explaining that this ensures the potatoes are thoroughly dry and crisp up beautifully.
While still piping hot, Poppy recommends returning the potatoes to the pan and introducing the "secret ingredient" — the clotted cream.
She suggested adding roughly half a tub before folding it through the potatoes. Poppy confessed it felt "wild" combining the cream with the potatoes, yet she remained resolute in giving the recipe a proper go.
The chef advised allowing the clotted cream to melt into the potatoes, exclaiming it was "like butter".
She then finished with a light seasoning of salt before transferring the potatoes onto a baking tray that had been warming in the oven for a short while.
With that complete, the potatoes were ready to be popped into the oven. Once cooked, Poppy remarked that she thought they "looked good", noting that the cream appeared to have caramelised beautifully.
She proceeded to taste-test one of the potatoes, declaring it "looked great" and "crispy".
Turning her attention to the texture of the roasties, Poppy described them as "very soft", adding that the clotted cream seemed to dissolve on the tongue.
She suggested the roasties would be better suited to a summer roast dinner, warning that a thick, heavy gravy would simply "melt into nothing".
Taking another bite and reflecting further on the roasties, she commented: "They're just like fluffy clouds of potato. They are good actually."