Grilled Potatoes?

I bought a bunch of beautiful new potatoes from the Nichol's stand at the Oak Park Farmers Market on Saturday. I would love to be able to recreate the roasted potatoes I had a year or so ago at Avec: crunchy almost burned on the outside with ethereal, fluffy, perfectly cooked insides. Do you think it would be possible to do this on my Weber kettle? Maybe in a cast iron skillet? Would you boil them quickly first? (They're small, maybe an inch to an inch and a half in diameter.) Grill them with just salt or add fat of some sort?

Any advice would be much appreciated.

Kristen

kl5 wrote:I bought a bunch of beautiful new potatoes from the Nichol's stand at the Oak Park Farmers Market on Saturday. I would love to be able to recreate the roasted potatoes I had a year or so ago at Avec: crunchy almost burned on the outside with ethereal, fluffy, perfectly cooked insides. Do you think it would be possible to do this on my Weber kettle? Maybe in a cast iron skillet? Would you boil them quickly first? (They're small, maybe an inch to an inch and a half in diameter.) Grill them with just salt or add fat of some sort?

Any advice would be much appreciated.

Kristen

I often do this on my Weber Kettle. I start by halving or quartering the potatoes (depending on size), then tossing with some olive oil and herbs. Cook cut side down for a few minutes, then flip. This is one of my favorite ways to cook potatoes.

K.,

Steve's suggestion sounds like a very good one. Here's another possibility: Wrap them in foil and let them cook a bit slowly away from direct heat. When they're close to cooked through, you could move them near the direct flame for a little finishing of the exterior. Then dress them with sea salt and cracked pepper and perhaps a little fat (I'd use olive oil but butter would obviously be swell too). I guess you could dress them with a little olive oil to start with too, in which case you would get a pseudo-fried crispy outside as a result of the final cooking nearer the flame.

If the potatoes are really small, halving them seems less necessary and less attractive to me; I'd leave them whole.

I've made potatoes this way but not lately -- I hope I'm remembering what I've done correctly. Maybe I'll get some of those Nichol's new potatoes this weekend.

Antonius

I've done this with pretty mid-size potatoes and pieces on my grill, without any rawness.

A grill basket is a big help to avoid losing pieces (I've done this as thick "chips" a couple of times). Oiling them is critical for heat transfer and browning, but watch for flare-ups if you've over-lubed your taters. Salt also helps draw out moisture, decreasing the cooking (and thus burning time). A little finely minced garlic and rosemary tossed over them before grilling works nice too.

Antonius expressed doubt at the need for halving, but my experience is that it's the cut sides, where starches leach out, that get that nice crisp brownness. If you peel the spuds you can get the same results, but that is often not worth the effort (and loss of flavor) for the smaller potatoes.

JoelF wrote:Antonius expressed doubt at the need for halving, but my experience is that it's the cut sides, where starches leach out, that get that nice crisp brownness.

I agree with this. It's the cut sides that make them crispy & delicious. Othewise, thy're just small baked potatoes.

JoelF wrote:Antonius expressed doubt at the need for halving, but my experience is that it's the cut sides, where starches leach out, that get that nice crisp brownness.

Only insofar as the potatoes in question are quite small, as the new potatoes K. describes seem to be. Also, if the outside is oiled, as I indicated above, the tender skin of a new potato will crisp up and there should be some nice browning when they're finished near the flame; that tender skin of new potato is a definite plus, to my mind... IMHO, as they say.

But with larger, older potatoes, yes, halving is a very reasonable option, depending on how one wants the outside to be.

stevez wrote:I agree with this. It's the cut sides that make them crispy & delicious. Othewise, thy're just small baked potatoes.

But these are specifically small, new potatoes, cooked on a grill, picking up smokiness and then being touched with fire. That's not "just small baked potatoes."

A

You could do a grilled potato salad one of two ways. Halve or quarter the potatos and proceed to grill till skin turns crisp and then its up to you, you can just place them in a shallow baking dish and go the way of butter, bacon, sour cream, cheese and chives or you could do a version with vinegrette, bleu cheese and bacon. After you choose the ingredients just mix them all up together, or just create your own version of grilled potato salad. Its hard to go wrong either way.

Antonius wrote:But these are specifically small, new potatoes, cooked on a grill, picking up smokiness and then being touched with fire. That's not "just small baked potatoes."

A

A,

Try my method one of these days and you''ll see what I'm talking about. It's a completely different dish when the cut sides are nicely browned and crispy. It gives the potatoes a certain french fry-like quality that you just don't get with the skin on (which is also a perfictly fine way to cook a new potato).

stevez wrote:

Antonius wrote:But these are specifically small, new potatoes, cooked on a grill, picking up smokiness and then being touched with fire. That's not "just small baked potatoes."

A

A,

Try my method one of these days and you''ll see what I'm talking about. It's a completely different dish when the cut sides are nicely browned and crispy. It gives the potatoes a certain french fry-like quality that you just don't get with the skin on (which is also a perfctly fine way to cook a new potato).

Steve,

I know what you're talking about and do it that way under appropriate circumstances, which is most of the time. But with potatoes of the size Kristin described, diameter of an inch to an inch and a half...

kl5 wrote:(They're small, maybe an inch to an inch and a half in diameter.)

... I think it would be nice to leave them whole. Those are very small potatoes and cutting them in half makes them less than bite-size. And besides, as I said before, the thin, tender skin will surely allow the potatoes to brown and crisp with no problem... at least so it seems to me.

A

Thanks for all the suggestions. I ended up using JoelF's method, which I had tried before with not the greatest results. I left about half of the (smaller) potatoes whole and halved the rest. Olive oil, garlic, rosemary from the garden, sea salt, black pepper. On the grill in a grill basket with the lid on for much longer than I thought it would take. About 45 minutes. I took the lid off to grill bread and meat and the potatoes crisped up nicely. Not the ambrosia that I had at Avec, but really really nice. I think I'll try the foil next time.

(And may I take a moment to brag about the salad I made, finally, completely from my garden? Two baby lettuces and beet greens, pickles, and stupice tomatoes with olive oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper. This is our first garden, and I can't fathom how we lived before.)

Kristen