These amazing confit potatoes are crispy on the outside and melt-in-your-mouth tender on the inside. Learn how to make this delicious side dish using the traditional method.
What are confit potatoes?
Confit is a cooking method from French cuisine where food is slowly cooked in fat. This technique makes the food very tender and flavorful. Have a look at the duck confit from a few days ago: melt-in-your-mouth duck legs slowly cooked in fat and fried until golden and crispy. Perfection!
And it is the same with this potato confit! Delicious potatoes cooked until golden brown, crispy on the outside, and so soft and comforting on the inside.
This is a really special potato side dish, perfect for the duck confit or any other roast you are planning on serving for Thanksgiving or Christmas. Serve it with Orange Duck, Red Wine Turkey, or Roasted Stuffed Whole Chicken, for instance.
Recipe ingredients
- Potatoes: Use very small, waxy, or semi-waxy potatoes. Fingerling or other small potatoes work well.
- Cut them into 1.2–1.6 inch (3–4 cm) pieces. For these rosemary confit potatoes, I left the very small ones whole and halved the larger ones. Ensure all potato pieces are roughly the same size.
- Fat: Duck or goose fat. While duck fat is traditional, it can be hard to find. Goose fat is more common and works just as well. Use whichever you can get; the end result will be the same.
- Garlic, flaky salt, fresh rosemary, or thyme sprigs.
How to make potato confit?
Step #1: Cover tubers with cold water, add salt, bring to a boil, and boil for 4 minutes. Drain and dry them thoroughly with a clean kitchen towel.
Step #2: Place the fat in the roasting tin and let it melt in the preheated oven; it will take about 10 minutes.
Step #3: Carefully (splatters) add the dried tubers to the roasting tin. Toss them, season them with flaky sea salt, and add garlic and rosemary.
Step #4: Roast potatoes until crispy and tender (30-40 minutes), shaking the tin a few times in between.
Tips for making potato confit
Cooking times:
Many recipes suggest roasting the potatoes directly in goose or duck fat. You can do that, but I believe boiling the potatoes briefly before roasting makes them even better.
Plus, instead of cooking them for 1 to 1 ½ hours in the oven, you'll only need to boil them for about 4 minutes and then roast them for 30 minutes.
Another advantage of this method is that you can parboil the potatoes in advance and bake them the next day, just before serving.
How to store and reheat confit potatoes?
You can reheat the potatoes in the oven until the fat is liquid again and the potatoes are hot, but only with leftovers. Don't cook this dish ahead of time; reheat it for serving.
Nutrition calculation
To make this confit potato recipe, you will need 5.5 oz duck fat/ 150 g. However, most of it will be left in the pan, so I only considered 2 tablespoons of fat in the nutrition calculation. It is not entirely accurate, I suppose, but it is the best I can offer.
Confit Potatoes
Ingredients
- 2 lbs very small potatoes 1 kg, Note 2
- 5.5 oz duck fat or goose fat, 150 g
- 2 large rosemary sprigs
- 2-4 garlic cloves more to taste
- coarse sea salt and freshly ground black pepper.
Instructions
- Cook potatoes: Wash the potatoes. Leave the small potatoes whole and cut the larger ones so that all pieces are similar in size, about 1.2 – 1.6 inches/3-4 cm. Place them in a pot with salted water. Bring the water to a boil and let the potatoes boil for 4 minutes. Drain them well. Place them on a large kitchen cloth and pat them dry (Note 3).You can proceed with the recipe for confit potatoes now or refrigerate the parboiled potatoes until the next day.2 lbs very small potatoes/ 1 kg
- Heat the fat: In the meantime, preheat the oven to 400°F/ 200°C. Place the duck fat in a roasting tin large enough to hold all the potatoes in a single layer. Place it in the oven, and let the fat melt, and get hot for about 10 minutes.5.5 oz duck fat/ 150 g
- Prepare for roasting: Remove the roasting tin from the oven and carefully place the dried potatoes into it. Turn them into the fat to coat them all over.
- Season: Add the peeled garlic cloves and the rosemary sprigs. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.2-4 garlic cloves + 2 large rosemary sprigs + coarse sea salt and freshly ground black pepper.
- Roast for about 30-40 minutes or until the potatoes are golden brown and crispy on the outside and very tender on the inside. Shake the pan a couple of times in between to make sure that the potatoes are browning on all sides.
- Serve immediately, sprinkled with flaky salt and pepper.
Notes
- Nutrition: To make the potato confit, you will need 150 g/ 5.5 oz/ 150 g duck or goose fat. However, most of it will be left in the pan, so I only considered 2 tablespoons of goose fat in the nutrition calculation. It is not entirely accurate, I suppose, but it is the best I can offer.
- Potatoes: You will need very small waxy potatoes; I used fingerling potatoes.
- Parboiling the potatoes for 4 minutes reduces the roasting time considerably and allows you to start preparing the dish in advance.
- Garlic: If you want to serve confit garlic with the potatoes, add the garlic about 5 minutes after you start roasting the potatoes. This prevents the garlic from getting too dark, and you can serve it alongside the potatoes. I love biting into those caramelized garlic cloves. Use more garlic if you want to ensure everyone at the table gets at least one.
Christopher Harris says
These may be nice, but they are just roast potatoes. Confit means to cook long and slow, completely submerged in fat, at low temperature (usually just over 100C, for several hours).
marie johson says
This Confit Potatoes recipe is truly special. Its melt-in-your-mouth quality is unmatched by any other potato I've tried
angiesrecipes says
They must be very very very yummy made with duck fat!!
mjskitchen says
What tasty potatoes! I'm sure they are excellent with duck fat, but since I've never had a goose, it's hard to know what the flavor profile would be. But the how can you go wrong with garlic and rosemary. We get beautiful little fingerling potatoes this time of year and would like to try this. Another great recipe Adina! Happy Holidays!
mary anderson says
making the main meal is so difficult on weekend because they always want something new and this site is my hack lol thanks for making different recipes i can copy lol 🙂