Chef Mike Reid said tossing your potatoes in potato starch guarantees a “really crunchy” outcome.
As part of Channel 5’s The Christmas Taste Test Restaurant, food testers claimed Aldi’s roast potatoes were “perfect”, over ones sold by Lidl and Morrisons.
Giving an insight into how the supermarket produce the highly-praised potatoes, Mike said using fats and potato starch are the key ingredients.
“The beauty of these supermarket potatoes is they all use a type of animal fat to add that sense of luxury,” he explained.
“Morrisons use a goose fat, Lidl use a duck fat, and Aldi’s got probably the king of all fats for me, the Wagyu.”
The chef says cooking in the fat adds “a real sense of richness” as well as “nuttiness” and buttery taste.
“It also helps get the potatoes nice and crispy when roasting,” he explained.
Whichever fat you choose to cook your roast potatoes in, Mike says tossing them in potato starch is key for crisp.
“One more trick that the supermarkets use to achieve that perfect crispy roast potato, is potato starch,” he shared.
Mike says covering roasties in this “super cheap” ingredient guarantees a “really crunchy” potato.
“So you just toss it through and then you’re left with a gorgeous potato that’s coated in the potato starch,” he explained.
“What that’s going to do when it cooks is, it’s going to absorb the oil and the fats and go super crispy on the outside.
“It’s a really nice cheap way of getting that really crunchy potato every time.”
Elsewhere on the show, Mike shared how a simple trick when cooking pigs in blankets can make a difference.
The chef says stretching out the bacon as far as possible and wrapping it tightly around the sausage will ensure it stays on.
He explained: “Because we’ve stretched it, there’s so much space now for that to shrink into, so it’s not going to unravel, it’s nice and tight. There’s nothing worse than when your bacon falls off your chipolata.
“So you can achieve this at home by using the back of your knife to stretch out that bacon. This is what supermarkets do, they’ll have machines that do this for them, that elongate the bacon.”
The Christmas Taste Test Restaurant is available to watch on My5.
