Pioneer Woman’s Crash Hot Potatoes

Mar 18, 2013

You always need a couple of good potato side dish recipes around for when you’re not feeling super inspired. For some reason, I don’t default to potatoes, and I always have trouble coming up with starchy sides. I’ll gravitate to a kale, a brussels sprout dish, something along those lines, but lots of people probably hate me for that since the instinctive reaction is “blech!”. So I’m trying to build up an arsenal of “regular” sides.

I found this recipe on Pioneer Woman’s site, and like the idea because it seemed simple and easy. Things like mashed potatoes scare me, because there are too many steps, too much mess, and it takes quite a while. This dish was a great easy side with the balsamic beef we made Saturday night, easy to put together, and didn’t require us to find lots of work space in my tiny kitchen.

Preheat the oven to 450 F, then bring a pot of salted water to a boil. Add the potatoes, and boil until they’re tender.

You want to make sure you choose small potatoes, and ones that are fairly close to the same size.

If you don’t want to make a mess, lay down tin foil, then drizzle some olive oil over it. Pull the potatoes out of the water and place on the pan, rolling around in the olive oil.

Smash the potatoes with a smasher or masher. Mine kind of made a mess. But we got to the same place in the end (my belly).

Chop up the rosemary really finely. I made them another time and used thyme instead of rosemary, and it was great.

Generously sprinkle the potatoes with the herbs, salt, and pepper. I threw in a little garlic powder too.

Drizzle generously with more olive oil, making sure to get most of the potato’s surfaces covered. Use your hands, or a pastry brush to spread the oil out.

Bake for 20-25 minutes, until golden brown and crispy.

Lest you think they all turned out that beautiful, here are some of the others. But they still tasted just as delicious.

Pioneer Woman’s Crash Hot Potatoes

• 12 whole new potatoes (or other small round potatoes)
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• Fresh ground sea salt & black pepper to taste
• Rosemary (or other herbs of choice) to taste
• Garlic powder to taste

Preheat oven to 450 F. Bring a pot of salted water to a boil and add in the potatoes. Cook until they are fork-tender.

On a sheet pan (covered in foil), generously drizzle olive oil. Place the tender potatoes on the cookie sheet, leaving plenty of room between each potato. Using a potato masher (or you could use a glass or something), gently press down each potato until it slightly mashes. Rotate the masher a quarter turn and mash again. Drizzle more olive oil on the potatoes and spread around the tops of each crushed potato. Sprinkle the potatoes with fresh-ground sea salt, black pepper and chopped rosemary (or thyme or whatever herb you have available).

Bake for 20-25 minutes until golden brown and crispy.

Original recipe here