As the nights further draw in and November pushes on towards December we start to think it’s about time for our annual spud social. 30 of us staff, friends and family gathered excitedly for an evening to celebrate the potato, part fun, part serious research into cooking qualities. We try to keep it fresh and new every year, cooking something different but often with a focus on roast potatoes as we come up to Christmas. This year we had a few new ones to test, but to get things started we had a delicious Alouette potato roasted in a cake tray with vegan garlic butter, thyme and parsley. They were very tasty! If you are interested in adapting the same recipe, google saltnpepperhere potato stacks garlic and herb butter.
To follow 6 different varieties of potatoes roasted to perfection and served with onion gravy, sprouts and savoy and a mass of impassioned opinions as you would expect from a room full of enthusiastic grocers. Our top picks below!
Our top Christmas roasties include Alouette, warming and golden in colour. It looked the part, it delivered a pleasing crisp outer with soft and moist fluffy innards. It is also a fantastic masher, providing a smooth, creamy and yellow mash. Handy that you double up as both a roastie and a masher for your Crimbo dinner plate.
Cara also made the top roastie list this year, a newer variety from John at Newfields, he recommended this variety as a roaster, and swapping notes that this variety was doing really well in his onsite farmshop and garnering a bit of a local following. Having been given the intel, we knew it had a good roasting history and our tests confirmed this, mildly sweet, moist whilst slightly fluffy and crisping up well.
Last but by certainly no means least, previous experience told us that Carolus was a great roastie and has been a firm staff favourite for years. Carolus fluffed and crisped up beautifully whilst the centre’s were lovely light and fluffy in texture but not too dry. An absolutely perfect roastie.
