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Roasted Brown Butter Baby Potatoes
Roasted Brown Butter Baby Potatoes are exactly the sort of side dish I want on the Christmas table. Deeply golden, ridiculously soft inside, crisp around the edges, and coated in nutty brown butter with plenty of sea salt. They look impressive, but the method is wonderfully straightforward, with no preheated roasting tins, vats of hot fat, or unnecessary kitchen drama required.
Roasted Brown Butter Baby Potatoes
My roasted brown butter baby potatoes are crisp, golden and full of rich, nutty flavour, with fluffy centres and beautifully browned edges. I parboil the potatoes first, then toss them through sizzling brown butter before roasting until deeply golden. It’s a simple method, but it gives these roast potatoes so much flavour and texture. I love serving them with roast chicken, beef or lamb, especially when I want an easy side dish that feels a little more special than plain roast potatoes.
Ingredients
- 1kg baby potatoes, or new potatoes, halved
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 50g salted butter
- Sea salt flakes
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 200°C (conventional) / 180°C (fan) / 400°F / Gas Mark 6.
- Add the potatoes to a large saucepan and cover with cold, well-salted water, using roughly the same amount of salt you would for cooking pasta.
- Bring to the boil over high heat and cook for approximately 10 minutes, or until the potatoes can be pierced with a fork but aren't falling apart.
- Drain the potatoes into a colander. There's no need to allow them to cool.
- Return the empty saucepan to the heat and reduce to medium. Add the olive oil and butter and cook for approximately 5 minutes, or until the butter is sizzling and has turned a deep golden brown.
- Immediately return the hot potatoes to the saucepan and toss well through the brown butter until evenly coated.
- Transfer the potatoes to a baking tray and spread them out in a single layer.
- Roast for approximately 60 minutes, turning once or twice, or until deeply golden brown and crisp on the outside.
- Sprinkle with additional sea salt flakes to taste and serve hot.
Notes
- Don't overcook the potatoes during the boiling stage. You want them tender enough to pierce with a fork, but still firm enough to survive being tossed through the butter and roasted for another hour.
- There's no need to cool or steam-dry the potatoes after draining. Adding them straight back to the hot brown butter means they immediately soak up plenty of flavour.
- Keep a close eye on the butter as it browns. It will foam and sizzle before the milk solids begin to turn golden, and it can go from beautifully browned to burnt quite quickly.
- The olive oil helps prevent the butter from catching too quickly while still allowing you to get that deep, nutty brown butter flavour.
- Add the potatoes as soon as the butter has browned. Leaving brown butter sitting over the heat once it's ready increases the chance of it burning.
- Use a saucepan large enough to comfortably toss the potatoes without breaking them apart.
- Spread the potatoes out well on the baking tray. If they're crowded together, they'll steam rather than develop those deeply golden, crisp edges.
- Turning them once or twice during roasting helps more of the cut surfaces make contact with the hot tray and brown evenly.
- The potatoes are ready when the outside is a deep golden brown rather than just lightly coloured. The long roasting time is what gives them their crisp exterior and soft centre.
- Taste before adding the final sea salt flakes, as the potatoes have already been boiled in salted water and cooked in salted butter.
- Leftovers can be stored in a tightly sealed container in the fridge for up to 3 days. Reheat them in a hot oven or air fryer to bring back some of the crispness.
- These are best served fresh, but they can be frozen for up to 2 months. Reheat from frozen in a hot oven until crisp and heated through.
Nutrition Information:
Yield:
6Serving Size:
1Amount Per Serving: Calories: 234Total Fat: 9gSaturated Fat: 5gUnsaturated Fat: 5gCholesterol: 18mgSodium: 70mgCarbohydrates: 35gFiber: 4gSugar: 2gProtein: 4g
Please note, this nutrition information is to be used as a guide only. Nutrition information isn’t always accurate.
Serve this with
- Serve with my Slow-Cooked Lamb Shanks for a rich, comforting dinner. The crisp brown butter potatoes are perfect for soaking up the glossy sauce while adding plenty of golden crunch.
- Pair with my Paprika Lamb Cutlets for something a little lighter but still hearty. The nutty brown butter and crisp potatoes work beautifully with the smoky paprika and juicy lamb.
- Add alongside my Creamy Paprika Chicken with Buttery Grilled Green Beans. The potatoes bring crisp texture and a deep buttery flavour that works brilliantly with the creamy sauce.
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Christmas Cooking in a Very Strange Year
Well, Christmas is approaching, which means I’ve naturally entered the part of December where I start testing anything and everything that might eventually end up on the festive table. Usually I’d have at least some idea of how many people I was cooking for, but this year is obviously rather different. Between lockdowns, restrictions, bubbles, and the very real possibility that somebody could test positive at any moment, planning Christmas dinner feels slightly like trying to organise an event while somebody keeps quietly moving the goalposts.
There’s a little freedom in that uncertainty too, though. If I don’t know exactly who I’m cooking for, I can experiment more than usual and see what actually earns a place on the menu. The less enjoyable part is doing all that testing in our tiny shoebox kitchen. I’ve been sharing more of my cooking on Twitch lately, and while I absolutely love getting into that rhythm, the lack of bench space is becoming increasingly ridiculous. Add being stuck inside the same small flat twenty-four hours a day with my husband, and let’s just say I’ve been craving space and good conversation in equal measure.
Thankfully, Twitch has given me exactly the latter. The little community forming there has become such a balm during these strange months. Isn’t it funny how people still find ways to gather, even when gathering physically is almost impossible? We cook, chat, laugh, share stories, and for a little while the world feels less small. I’m already looking forward to the day when some of these names and faces can become real-life friendships. Until then, I’ll keep cooking from my tiny kitchen and pretending I have enough room for all the Christmas experiments I apparently insist on creating.
Brown Butter Makes Everything Better
These potatoes have absolutely earned their place in the Christmas rotation. They’re dark golden brown, crisp around the edges, ridiculously soft in the middle, and unapologetically salty because I have never understood the point of timid seasoning. Brown butter brings that gorgeous nutty richness without turning the whole thing into a complicated production, and because we’re using baby potatoes there’s very little prep beyond halving them and giving them a quick parboil.
I also deliberately wanted a method that avoided all the usual roast potato theatre. No preheating heavy trays until they’re terrifyingly hot, no cast iron roasters, no spooning molten dripping over everything, and no leaving the potatoes sitting around to cool after parboiling. I love a traditional roast potato as much as anyone, but Christmas cooking already involves enough moving parts. If I can get something beautifully golden and crisp with fewer steps, less equipment, and considerably less chance of burning myself, I’m taking the easier route.
The trick is browning the butter in the same saucepan after the potatoes have been drained, then returning them straight to the pan and tossing everything together while they’re still hot. That coats every surface before the potatoes go onto a simple baking tray and into the oven. I actually prefer the baking tray here rather than cast iron because I find the potatoes brown beautifully without becoming overly heavy or greasy. The result is exactly what I want beside a Christmas roast. Crisp outside, soft inside, buttery, salty, and rich without feeling fussy. And yes, brown butter makes almost everything better. I stand by that completely.
Keeping Christmas Simple
I did briefly consider adding sage because brown butter and sage are such a natural pairing, but in the end I decided against it. Christmas food can become overloaded surprisingly quickly. Every side dish starts competing for attention, suddenly everything has herbs, spices, nuts, glazes, crumbs, cheese, or something flamboyant scattered over the top, and the plate becomes exhausting before you’ve even eaten it. These potatoes don’t need that. Butter, salt, potatoes, done. Sometimes simplicity is the thing that makes a side dish actually work.
They’re also incredibly practical, which matters when I still have absolutely no idea whether I’ll be cooking for two people or a slightly larger bubble by the time Christmas Day arrives. Baby potatoes scale easily, the method doesn’t require any special equipment, and I can parboil a larger batch without turning the kitchen into complete chaos. In a year where nearly everything feels uncertain, I appreciate a recipe that behaves exactly as expected. Potatoes, at least, remain dependable.
So while Christmas 2020 may not look anything like the version I would’ve imagined a year ago, I’m trying to find little things to look forward to anyway. New recipes, Twitch evenings, the community that’s somehow grown out of all this isolation, and hopefully a plate piled far too high with good food. Maybe we’ll spend Christmas with others, maybe we won’t. Maybe the restrictions will change again before I’ve even finished writing this. At least I know what potatoes I’m making. Deeply golden, salty, brown buttery potatoes require no bubble system, no complicated negotiations, and absolutely no explanation. Honestly, at the moment, that feels like exactly the kind of certainty I need.
Frequently asked questions
Can I use larger potatoes instead of baby potatoes?
Yes. Cut them into evenly sized chunks so they cook at roughly the same rate as halved baby potatoes. Waxy or all-purpose potatoes work particularly well because they hold their shape through boiling, tossing and roasting without collapsing.
Can I make these ahead of time?
You can parboil the potatoes earlier in the day, drain them and refrigerate once cool, then brown the butter and roast them closer to serving. For the best flavour and texture, though, tossing the still-hot potatoes straight through the freshly browned butter gives you the strongest brown butter flavour.
Can I use unsalted butter instead?
Yes. Unsalted butter will brown in exactly the same way, but you’ll need to be a little more generous with the final seasoning. Salted butter works particularly well here because the seasoning is carried directly over the surface of the potatoes along with the browned milk solids.
Ingredient breakdown
Baby potatoes
Baby potatoes or new potatoes are ideal because their thin skins become crisp while the centres stay soft and creamy. Halving them creates plenty of flat surface area to brown against the baking tray while keeping the pieces substantial enough to survive the initial boiling and tossing.
Olive oil
The olive oil is combined with the butter while it browns. It adds a little extra fat for coating the potatoes and makes the finished brown butter mixture easier to distribute evenly across every piece.
Salted butter
Butter is what gives these potatoes their distinctive nutty flavour. As it cooks, the water evaporates and the milk solids toast until golden brown, creating a much deeper flavour than simply tossing the potatoes in melted butter. Salted butter also seasons the potatoes as they’re coated, although the final amount of salt should still be adjusted to taste.
Sea salt flakes
Sea salt flakes finish the potatoes after roasting, adding little bursts of seasoning across the crisp surface. Because the potatoes have already been boiled in salted water and coated in salted butter, taste first and add only as much as they need.
