One of the ‘plats du jour’ this season has to be the hasselback

Little known until recently, these little babies have been popping up all over Instagram and Pinterest. Relatively easy to cook and with a show-stopping grandeur it’s easy to understand why.

They hail from Sweden and are a cross between a roastie and a jacket potato. Here is my recipe for the perfect hasselback to pair with your Sunday roast.

Ingredients – serves 4 hungry people with maybe a few for leftovers

12 medium potatoes
4 table spoons of olive oil
2 large cloves of garlic, finely chopped
1 tsp dried rosemary
Sea salt
Pepper

(This oil mix covered my potatoes thrice and two coatings on the chicken I was also roasting)

Early in the day, I prepared my oil, garlic and rosemary mix – using a mortar and pestle to combine them into a paste of sorts. I then left that in the fridge for the garlic and rosemary to permeate the oil.

Take your potatoes and slice them a few millimetres apart taking care not to go right down to the bottom – try to leave 1-2cm at the bottom to avoid the ends falling off – as you can see happened with a few of mine – it’s trial and error the first time 😉

Pre-heat your oven to 200 degrees for fan assisted, adjust accordingly for different ovens.

Lay your potatoes out on a baking tray and brush each of them with your paste mix – I brushed the whole potato for the first application to stop them from sticking to the foil.

Place the tray in the oven, as close to the top as possible for 40 minutes.

After 40 minutes, take the tray out and coat the potatoes with the oil again – the slats will have started to splay so you can get in between them a little more this time; at this point, I added a good shake of sea salt and some pepper – this will be down to taste, I like a little pepper and a lot of sea salt.

Cook for further 20 minutes in the middle of the oven.

Remove and re-apply the oil once more and cook, in the middle, for a further 20 minutes. If you want them a little more charred on the outside, place them on a top rack of the oven but these were perfect.

As I was cooking a roast, the temperature changed around a little as I was simultaneously cooking these, a roast chicken, stuffing and a giant Yorkshire pudding but the beauty of these is that they are pretty versatile and you don’t need to cook them to an exact science.

Remove from the oven (after a total of around 80 minutes) and voila – the perfect hasselback. They are crispy on the outside and fluffy and moist on the inside. Despite serving these with a roast, I received no complaints that I had made these instead of regular roasties. Even the boyfriend who has little-to-no enthusiasm for food said he was ‘blown away’ by them. Winner.

The perfect roast companion 

I am dying to try these with cheese slotted in between the slices – the ultimate in indulgence!

the wee food blogger 💛