The Best Way To Reheat Roasted Potatoes And Maintain Crispiness
After a dinner including crispy, flavorful roasted potatoes, eating the leftovers that sat in the refrigerator overnight can be incredibly disappointing if reheated the wrong way. The potatoes may have lost their texture, leaving behind a soft, soggy morsel that is somehow also super dry inside. Not exactly what you had in mind ... and definitely not what you had for dinner the night before.
However you prepare your potatoes, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reports they will last up to three to four days if stored correctly. You'll want to get them in the fridge once they've cooled slightly, but still within two hours of being cooked to decrease the chances of any bad bacteria climbing into your leftovers (via Love Food Hate Waste). Once you are ready to whip those potatoes back out, there are a few simple tricks for getting them as close to that original crispness as possible when reheating. Spoiler alert: You'll definitely be skipping the microwave.
Fire up the oven to reheat roasted potatoes
Southern Living explains it's best to use the same method to reheat food as you cooked it, so for roasted potatoes, you'll want to go back to the oven. To get those potatoes crisp again, Consumer Reports recommends reheating in a 400-degree oven, covering your potatoes with tin foil until warm, and then removing the cover for a final few minutes to allow the skin to crisp back up.
Whether small cubes, wedges, or whole baked potatoes, reheating in the oven will help your roasted masterpieces become crispy on the outside while remaining soft on the inside (via Taste of Home). A microwave might be the quicker option, but it won't achieve the desired outcome, often resulting in overly dry reheated spuds. A little extra effort goes a long way in the world of reheating, so although it might take 20 minutes for you to achieve perfectly reheated roasted potatoes, that time is well worth the effort, as it will result in a dish with a heck of a lot better chew than other reheating methods.