Absolute best baked (what some people mistakenly call roast) potatoes I've ever had were in a small restaurant in Cornwall, England.
They were almost definitely locally grown, doubtless extremely fresh, and almost definitely an heirloom variety. (And I acknowledge that food always tastes better when you're on holiday.)
We were told the preparation was pretty simple: 'boil in a strong stock until almost fully cooked, then dry and coat in goose fat, and then bake until they look good'.
(Apart from being much faster than conventional baked potatoes, and much much faster & safer than this rosin preparation, there's little risk of getting sick from this method.)
It's not even specific to potatoes. "Bake" and "roast" are distinct culinary jargon terms. Quoth ChatGPT:
> Baking occurs at a moderate temperature, and is generally used to cook and solidify foods without browning them excessively. This technique creates a consistent, even texture throughout the food.
> Roasting, meanwhile, uses a higher temperature, and focuses on achieving a crispy, browned exterior with a tender interior, enhancing flavors through caramelization and the Maillard reaction.
Anything you put in an oven covered completely in aluminum foil —like a baked potato — is only going to end up baked, not roasted.
> Anything you put in an oven covered completely in aluminum foil —like a baked potato — is only going to end up baked, not roasted.
Actually, this produces a steamed potato. Covering it in foil is a poor technique for this reason. To properly do this: wash the potato, stab the skin a few times with a fork (failure to do this may produce an exploded potato), sprinkle with salt while still damp so the salt adheres, then roast directly on the oven rack (or in a barbecue) until squeezing it gives a fair bit of give.
Sometimes I'll reheat some puff pastry wrapped items on a metal pizza tray (one of the ones with regular series of holes punched in it) as it helps with the keeping a crispier texture on the base.
This doesn't mean that my chicken and mushroom puffy has transubstantiated into pizza.
Similarly, cooking potatoes in what you call a roasting tin, or calling the meal a Sunday roast, isn't the definition of roasting any more than it's the definition of Sunday.
The distinction I draw is that roasting involves fire, baking does not.
The rest of the responses in this thread variously assert that the distinction:
- depends on temperature - there's a threshold above which you are now roasting not baking. This probably has roots in the cook by open flame / fire etymology, given that's usually warmer and harder to control accurately. (I will occasionally do a slow cook 'the next day' in my pizza oven using residual heat, and resurrect a small fire for the final smoking & crisping stage - though I am delighted to report that I have never pondered whether I'm then serving baked or roasted food.)
- depends on whether you peel your potatoes, which I'm struggling to reconcile given a) how does this distinction apply for non-potato and/or non-peelable foods, and b) if you peeled only half your potato and then cooked the whole thing - do you now possess a frankenstein potato, half roasted, half baked?
- depends whether the potatoes are cut - evidently once they are cut they can no longer be baked, only roasted. This is obviously at odds with the temperature crowd, and might (or might not) contradict the peeling-defines-state crowd too. They can work it out between themselves.
Anyway, I've had cooked potatoes in all kinds of forms, and I'm quite happy if people have their own local definitions for the two adjectives - so long as they're happy that I have mine.
We're not, because you're being pointlessly tedious about it. Things have names, they can't necessarily be logically explained.
Temperature is what I would have said though. Aga for example (long established cast iron range manufacturer) names its ovens like 'simmering oven', 'baking oven', 'roasting oven' on a 3 door, according to their approximate temperature. Roast potatoes would absolutely be produced from the roasting, not baking, oven.
The roast potatoes you ate in Cornwall were definitely cooked above a circa 160-180C baking temperature.
It's not infallible though, I 'bake' bread at 230C (at least outside the casserole).
The main thing is that things have names and the thing called 'baked potato' is not what you ate in Cornwall, it's an entirely different potato thing that also exists.
I think the distinction might come down to basting. If you definitely wouldn't baste the article, then you're baking it, if you do or might baste it, then you're roasting it.
Roast potatoes could easily be basted, baked potatoes definitely wouldn't be, basting bread seems absurd but basting a joint is obvious.
Regardless I think it should be obvious to all that a terminology that assigns the name "baked beef" to a joint done in a conventional oven is totally insane and nonsense.
After tossing peeled, sliced, sections of potato in some fat / oil before putting them in the oven, I wouldn't add further oil to them - does this mean they're not basted, or they are (by the original covering)?
Is beef wellington baked or roasted, by your definition?
You might not personally but you could keep basting them, it wouldn't turn them into a different dish or completely ruin them if you did. Compare with what would happen if you kept basting bread.
I've never cooked beef wellington so I don't really know, but it seems like it's baked and I imagine you're saying it's basted? As far as I can tell it's an egg glaze, which is not basting. Anyway, worst case scenario, my definition has some edge cases or needs nitpicking over the definition of a baste. This is nothing next to your insistence that a Sunday dinner includes baked beef.
I can't imagine basting a beef wellington, because of the pastry wrapper, but that doesn't mean you couldn't, so I was trying to work out what your definition came down to.
It sounds like you're saying that if you think something could be basted, then it's a roast, but if it couldn't, then it's baked.
If that's your intent, then it feels like the can's been kicked down the road to the comparably confusing definition of a 'bastable food', yes?
(To clarify -- this is because I'm assuming, per previous response, that it's not so much if something was actually basted, but whether it should / could be.)
Roast potatoes can't be called baked potatoes because baked potatoes are a well-defined product. The name transcends cooking method - a baked potato made in a microwave is still a baked potato.
> Absolute best baked (what some people mistakenly call roast) potatoes I've ever had were in a small restaurant in Cornwall, England.
> [...]
> We were told the preparation was pretty simple: 'boil in a strong stock until almost fully cooked, then dry and coat in goose fat, and then bake until they look good'.
You had roast potatoes.
I won't tell you how to make Buffalo wings or Chicago pizza.
What I meant was that I find the Chicago style way too thick, heavy, cheesy, slow to cook. It feels like a manifestation of the country's preference for heavy-handedness and excess. This may be an ungracious take.
In any case it looks closer to a pie or lasagna style dish than what most people would consider a pizza. I gather it partly gets its name from the cooking tin that's used, which brings us back to an earlier problem.
Anyway, I naturally lean more towards the Napoli style food as being proper pizza - and I'm sure we can all agree on that being a more faithful, accurate, just generally better interpretation.
A modest volume of high quality toppings, on a thin base that's enjoyed a slow-ferment (I invariably do poolish), enough proper / good cheese to taste but not so much as to clog up, and the whole thing is cooked fast.
IIRC, Napoli definition requires less than 90s to cook, but I struggle with getting to, maintaining, and then handling the necessary temperatures (around 450 degrees) so I usually end up cooking around 370 degrees for closer to 2.5 minutes.
I know. And just like your disregard for well and long established meanings of 'roast potato' and 'baked potato' I've decided to disregard all the words you've used expecting to convey that you don't like Chicago 'pizza', and take them to to mean that you do. Mad, if you ask me, but to each their own - enjoy!
In Britain, baked potatoes are oven-cooked whole, skin on, usually without fat; roast potatoes are peeled, cut into large uniform chunks (halved or quartered depending on the size), parboiled, then oven-cooked in lots of fat.
As an American, we have the same names for the same types of potatoes and cooking methods. I have no idea what OP is on about.
If I ordered a baked potato in a restaurant and did not receive an entire, whole, skin-on potato, optionally sliced open across the top, I would be shocked and would have a negative opinion of the restaurant.
We make roasted potatoes all the time, much like you describe. When we do it at home, we'll frequently use Idaho Gold potatoes that do not need to be peeled, and we'll skip the parboiling step. Plenty of places make this without skipping those steps, and they're delicious, just more labor intensive.
I mean, sure, but there exist some recipes where the inclusion of a thick potato skin is not appropriate, and a russet potato ought be peeled if that is the variety of potato being used. A thin-skinned potato like the idaho gold can sometimes be used in these recipes without peeling.
The russet skin would of course not render the dish inedible, but the final result would be much more different than what the recipe was trying to achieve.
"Need" here means "required to yield desired final product" not "necessary or else you'll die".
That's how my mother used to do it, but I've found that you don't actually need to use "lots of fat" -- you can get good results with much less (just enough oil or goose fat to cover the bottom of the roasting tray), provided you toss the potatoes in it (pre-heated) when putting them in, and turn them a few times during cooking.
The variety of potatoes used is also a critical factor.
We eat almost only almond potatoes. After eating those, there is nothing else that really cuts it any more. Every time we get back to Sweden and finaly can eat almond potatoes again, it's like "Oh, THIS is how it's supposed to taste". If you don't like potatoes, it's because you haven't had these. Just cook them carefully, they become mashed potatoes very easily. Serve as they are, with a piece of butter. I can eat only potatoes the whole week.
Yes, they can be hard to find in southern parts because they are harder to grow in warm climate.
I tend to cheat a little. Parboil until the surface layer is soft, pour into a large colander. Allow to steam off for a while. Toss and turn to get all surfaces properly roughed up, move into a large (steel) bowl. Add 3-4 tablespoons of goose fat, toss and turn again to coat all surfaces.
Move to a sufficiently deep (steel) baking tray, sprinkle with salt, add a couple of sprigs of fresh rosemary on top, and cook until properly roasted. No need to even turn them around.
> The variety of potatoes used is also a critical factor.
You missed the important step after parboiling - you toss the potatoes in the pan used for parboiling, so that the outside gets slightly mashed around the edges; basically just give them all a single smack against the inside of the drained pan.
Btw I never knew a restaurant in Britain use locally grown heirloom varieties of anything without making a big deal about it. Although I suppose in American terms all produce grown in Britain is fairly local. Potato growing tends to be quite regional.
'New potatoes', the thin skinned spring type, usually eaten boiled with the skin on, come first from Jersey (Jersey Royals). Then Cornwall, but more commonly Pembrokeshire (just over the Bristol Channel from Cornwall). The thick skinned general purpose types come later from places with deep stone free soils. I think more of Lincolnshire, although they are grown in pockets all over. I like the ones from the localised sandy soils in mid Shropshire, but I grew up on them so I'm probably biased. Those are the ones I would roast.
I think other responders have suitably highlighted how you did in fact have roast potatoes, but what I'd like to know is how you became so convinced you had baked potatoes in the first place? Could you describe for us what you think roast potatoes and baked potatoes are?
Alas my record keeping back in 2011 was not so good -- I'm quietly confident it would have been in St Mawes, but, as noted, 13+ years back so it's doubtful that the restaurant, chef, or menu remains.
Oh no - the poor place will be inundated with the tech-adjacent insisting on their personal definitions of culinary terms. Sounds like it could be the setup for a modern Monty Python sketch, actually
They were almost definitely locally grown, doubtless extremely fresh, and almost definitely an heirloom variety. (And I acknowledge that food always tastes better when you're on holiday.)
We were told the preparation was pretty simple: 'boil in a strong stock until almost fully cooked, then dry and coat in goose fat, and then bake until they look good'.
(Apart from being much faster than conventional baked potatoes, and much much faster & safer than this rosin preparation, there's little risk of getting sick from this method.)