Salt Roasted Potatoes

When we were in Honolulu, we had dinner at Morimoto's, which is a restaurant owned by an Iron Chef. I had some salt-roasted fingerling potatoes with my dinner that were incredibly tender and flavorful and had zero fat.

I love potatoes but tend to drown them in butter so I was intrigued by these salt-roasted potatoes. A quick Google search turned up several recipes so I got some boxes of kosher salt, a bag of fingerling potatoes and Kent made a batch.

We used a total of 10 small red potatoes, with five in each baking dish. We also use kosher salt because of the texture. I've read other recipes that use a mixture of rock salt and kosher salt and we'll give that a try. I don't think that normal salt would work as well since the salt would bake to solid rock-like consistency.

Ingredients:

10 small red potatoes
Kosher salt

Directions:

• Preheat the oven to 400° F
• Place the potatoes in a baking dish or two (we generally use two small baking dishes)
• (Here's where things get less precise) Using enough salt to cover the potatoes entirely, moisten the salt with water to form a thick paste. You don't want it to be runny, just sort of sticky.
• Cover the potatoes with your salt mixture and bake at 400°F for about 30 minutes.
• Let cool a bit before you start cracking the salt crust
• Break the crust and carefully extract the potatoes
• Brush off any excess salt and serve immediately

Sticky, not runny

Cracking the crust

Oven Roasted Potatoes

These potatoes cook up easily, require little in the way of prep or attention and you can add carrots, onions, garlic or even nasty turnips or parsnips to them. As pictured, I used just potatoes because I served them with the Sunday Dinner Pot Roast which already had carrots and onions.

Ingredients:

1 pound red potatoes, washed and cut into large chunks
About 2 t olive oil

Directions:

• Preheat the oven to 350F.
• Line a jelly roll pan with foil and spray with cooking spray.
• Toss the potato chunks with the olive oil until they are lightly coated.
• Place the potato chunks on the pan and bake for an hour, stirring every 15 minutes.
• Add salt and pepper at the table.

Sliced Baked Potatoes – Two Versions

Version 1

Version 2

How do you find new recipes? I find a lot of mine while eating out or surfing the web. I ran across an image for this recipe a couple of weeks ago on Pinterest. Well I like potatoes, and these seemed pretty interesting so I thought I’d give it a try. We tend to go meatless a couple of days a week and this looked like a hearty, meatless entrée to me.

I googled sliced baked potatoes and found a handful of recipes so I sort of combined them all together to create my own.

Be warned, neither version is a hands-off recipe. You’ll need to tend to your potatoes about every 10 to 15 minutes until they are cooked.

Ingredients:
2 large baking potatoes, scrubbed and with the skin on
4 T butter, melted
½ C shredded cheese, your choice (I use cheddar/jack cheese from Costco)
Italian seasoning to taste
Directions:

Version 1

• Preheat the oven to 400F.
• Place two wooden spoons on a cutting board about as far apart as your potatoes are wide. Use the handles to hold your potato in place as you slice the potatoes and to keep you from slicing all the way through. You want the bottom of the potato to remain intact. Also, slice thinly—my slices are about ¼ inch wide.
• Place the sliced potatoes in a baking pan. I use cooking spray only because I wanted an easier clean up session afterwards.
• Carefully open your sliced potatoes and drizzle the melted butter across them. Don’t worry when it runs out the sides—you will be basting the potatoes with this butter throughout the cooking process.
• Sprinkle the Italian seasoning on the potatoes and try to get some inside the slices.
• Bake for a total of 60 minutes. Important! About every 10 minutes, pull the potatoes out and re-baste with the butter. Also turn them over. That will let all the skin get a butter bath.
• After 60 minutes, remove from the oven.
• Sprinkle the shredded cheese over the potatoes and return to the oven for about 10 minutes.
• When done, place each potato in a shallow bowl. Pour the remaining melted butter over the potatoes.

Version 2

• Preheat the oven to 400F.
• Slice the potatoes into thin slices, preferably about ¼ inch wide.
• Pour about half of the melted butter into a large baking dish (9x13) that’s been sprayed with cooking spray. Tilt the pan around until you’ve coated the entire bottom of the pan.
• Place the sliced potatoes in the so that the slices are in no more than two layers. Ideally you want just one layer of potatoes.
• Drizzle the melted butter across the slices.
• Sprinkle the Italian seasoning on the slices.
• Bake for about 60 minutes. About every 15 minutes, pull the potatoes out and flip them. This helps a lot with ensuring the potatoes brown evenly.
• After 60 minutes, remove from the oven and sprinkle the shredded cheese over the potatoes. Bake for another five minutes or until the cheese is all melted.
• Serve with sour cream if you feel decadent.