17 Potato Roasting Hacks You'll Wish You Knew Sooner

When it comes to achieving flawless texture and consistency, the type of potato you use matters. Farmers grow over 200 types of potatoes worldwide, so you get to choose from more than a few options. In general, it's best to steer clear of the starchy varieties, like Russet and Kennebec. The soft, fluffy texture of these potatoes makes them ideal for baking and preparing french fries, but not so much for roasting. Starchy potatoes can fall apart easily, and they tend to turn out dry.

The best potatoes for roasting are thin-skinned and waxy, like fingerling, red bliss, or German butterballs. Although they're considered a hybrid potato (falling somewhere between a waxy and starchy potato), Yukon golds also work really well for making roasted potatoes. These potatoes hold their form and stay moist inside while the exterior browns in the hot oven.

It's advice like this that makes new cooks throw up their hands and want to give up before they even get started. What do you mean there's a right and wrong way to salt potatoes? Before you get too frustrated, we'll start by saying that skipping this step won't completely ruin your potatoes. But taking this advice is a potato roasting hack that will make your potatoes taste fantastic.

Parboiling potatoes in salted water seasons the potato from the inside out, helping them taste their best as they roast in the oven. If you forgot to salt the cooking water, though, we advise waiting until after you roast the potatoes to sprinkle on the salt. Directly salting the potatoes before they go into the oven will draw out moisture from the center of the potato, preventing it from fully crisping up as it cooks.

One of the most important rules about roasting vegetables is to give them plenty of space on the baking sheet. Otherwise, the steam released by the cooking process can prevent caramelization, leaving the vegetables mushy. This advice holds true for potatoes as well, but there's an additional hack that will help the exteriors cook up to perfection.

When it comes to roasting potatoes, it's important to make sure they are also dry before they hit the oven. Actress Emily Blunt shared this hack in her roasted potato recipe that broke the internet when it was shared by none other than Ina Garten (if the Barefoot Contessa herself endorses it, you know it's worth trying). After parboiling the potatoes, Blunt drains the potatoes and leaves them on a wire rack to dry for 15 minutes. This step helps to form a crust on the outside, resulting in superior texture.

Once you start using this potato roasting hack, you'll wonder why no one told you about it sooner. The idea here is to preheat the baking pan before you add the cut potatoes, reducing their overall cooking time while enhancing their level of crunch. It makes sense when you think about it; when was the last time you cooked anything on the grill or on the stovetop without preheating the pan first?

Simply place your baking sheet in the oven while it goes through its preheat cycle. When the oven is preheated, remove the pan (using oven mitts, of course) and add a layer of cooking oil. Be careful when you add the potatoes here as the heat can cause any moisture on their surface to spit and splatter when it hits the hot pan.

This isn't necessarily the healthiest piece of advice, but the greatest roasted potatoes are cooked with plenty of high-quality cooking oil. If you don't use enough, the potatoes can turn out dry and wrinkled. Of course, using too much can cause them to be soggy and limp, so you'll want to use just enough for making the best roasted potatoes.

So how much oil is the right amount when roasting veggies? A good rule of thumb is to use one tablespoon of oil per pound of vegetables. Make sure the oil you choose has a high enough smoke point, too, or it can turn rancid and off-flavored in the oven. Stick to pure olive oil when roasting at 425 F, or look to avocado oil, peanut oil, refined vegetable oil, or ghee for roasting at 450 F.

If you have an air fryer, you should absolutely be air frying your "roast" potatoes — and you might want to consider getting one if you don't have one on hand. These gadgets are basically tabletop convection ovens that use a fan to circulate hot air around the cooking food. They can be used with little to no oil but can still crisp food as effectively as a deep-fryer, making them healthier than the alternative without sacrificing taste or texture.

Air-fried potatoes turn out just as crunchy as a 450 F oven even without all that extra cooking oil. You'll want to cut the potatoes into uniform pieces to ensure they cook evenly and don't forget to shake the air fryer basket from time to time to promote browning on all sides.

This is a weird hack, especially for the mayonnaise haters in the room, but it turns out you really should slather potatoes in mayo before you roast them. The idea here is that mayonnaise has a high fat and protein content that protects the potato from burning, creating an impeccable exterior while promoting a soft, pillowy interior. Mayonnaise works well for creating sublime grilled cheese sandwiches, and it's effective as a marinade for meat, so why not try it on potatoes?

To make it happen, place the potatoes in a bowl and add enough mayonnaise to evenly coat the tubers, massaging the oily condiment in with your hands. Add your favorite spices (paprika, garlic powder, and onion powder are good choices) and transfer the potatoes to a baking sheet. It's going to look really strange putting those mayo-slathered potatoes into the oven, but we promise they'll turn out looking totally normal after they cook.

Combining cooking techniques is a great way to achieve an incredible roasted potato texture. We've already talked about parboiling before roasting, but now we'll look at the opposite: frying before braising.

This process is based on the preparation of the Korean roast potato called gamja jorim. The result is a potato that's absolutely bursting with flavor. You can use the technique with any sauce you like, but we suggest starting with the original before experimenting. Cut the potatoes into even pieces and fry them in about a tablespoon of cooking oil. After the potatoes start to crisp up, add the braising liquid made with soy sauce, rice wine, and brown sugar. Cover the pot and braise the potatoes for about 30 minutes, until the sauce is thick and the potatoes are roasted all the way through.

Cutting your potatoes into large wedges might make them look like oven-roasted fries, but it won't help them taste great. It turns out that shape matters more than you'd think. Chef Tom "Westy" Westerland told the Daily Star that he always cuts his potatoes into something called "roast potato shape." The idea here is to create as many sides on the potato as possible, increasing the opportunity for crispy edges.

If you cut a potato into wedges, it only has two sides, so that's not going to work. Cut it into cubes, though, and you'll double the starchy surface area. If you really want to get wild with it, you can use an old French cut called the tournée cut. Tourne means "turned" in French, and it involves cutting a root vegetable (like a potato or carrot) as you turn it in your hands, transforming it into a seven-sided football.