Spicy Roasted Red Potatoes {With Sweet Paprika}

Spicy Roasted Red Potatoes. A twist on the classic roast potato, these crispy little potato delights are flavored with sweet paprika and chilli and are crunchy on the outside and deliciously soft and fluffy on the inside. If your kids love roasties, try these right now, they're not something you regret!

Spicy Roasted Red Potatoes

There used to be these wedges everyone loved and I forget where they were from, I must have blanked it out because they were one of the things I missed the most when we started eating Clean. There weren't loads of things I really missed, but those wedges were one of them. I like spice you see, more than the rest of the gang and so they were one of the things I'd grab for myself on those rare occasions I wasn't with the kids.

And for a while, I just missed them, without doing anything about it. Then it dawned on me, after I'd been cooking all these new things and realising I could replace so much of the foods we used to eat, I could probably make them myself. It was just seasoning right? Yes. As it turned out it really was just seasoning. And crunch. And these potatoes have both in abundance.

These roasties get their name form the beautiful bright red Paprika in the spice mix, although by the time they're cooked and on your plate, they're more of a deeper darker red/brown than the bright red we see in the Paprika spice jar. But.. that doesn't take away from their flavor one little bit and these are a pretty delicious take on a classic roast potato, they're crunchy and spicy with the deep smokiness Paprika. Yum. I can never seem to make enough of these, one tray never quite does it as they're so moorish, you just keep nibbling more and more.

There's one thing that a roast potato, any type of roast potato, has to be and that's crunchy. The crispness of the outside is important. There's nothing quite so disappointing when you sit down to your dinner as soggy roasties and I promise you cooking them this way is going to give you a crispy crunch like nothing else. And the fluffy middle goes without saying of course. No one like a raw potato!

I'll tell you how to ensure crispy potatoes below. Keep reading!

Crispy Potatoes

There are a few steps to getting your potatoes crispy, and it's important to follow each step. THere's nothing massively complicated about this, but miss a step and you'll know about it!

• Peel your potatoes and chop them fairly small. We're not talking tiny, we just want to avoid those huge roasties that take forever to cook
• Cut them on the diagonal. This gives you sharper edges for the next steps
• Par boil them for 10 minutes. You wan the potato to be starting to break down but still in shape. At this point take them off the boil, drain them and pop them back in the pan
• In the pan, drained, 'shake' the potatoes about gently to roughen up the edges. As you can see in the photo, the edges start to crumble. This is good and forms the basis of the crunch. It also provides lots of places for the oil and spices to get into and infuse the potatoes with deliciousness

Spice Mix

This is a basic spice mix I use for these red roasted potatoes and you can adjust the quantities as you like. The base is semolina (this gives you that amazing crunch!). You can use flour if you can't get hold of any semolina, but if you can, you'll be pleased you did.

The other spices I've used here are smoked paprika, sweet paprika and chilli flakes. If you have ground chilli use that instead, I didn't and so I whizzed up my spices in the NutriBullet and ground them to a fine powder. This is where you lose some of that gorgeous bright red. Once it's mixed with the semolina it all becomes slightly duller :)

After you've shaken your par boiled potatoes and got those fluffy edges and they're still in the pan, sprinkle your spice mix over them and gently shake again. The spices mix will stick to some parts of the potato and not other parts, this is fine, just keep gently shaking the potatoes until all the spice mix is used up. There will inevitably be some left in the pan, don't worry about this.

What To Serve With These

While it's super tempting to sit and eat these straight from the oven, they do also go very well with lots of other foods :)

Here are some of the dinners we have these as a side to:

• Have a portion of these potatoes alongside this Blackbean Curry. The two go very well together and the potatoes act as a 'mop' for the curry sauce.
• Chilli Con Carne , for the same reasons of mopping sauce up
• Have them with this roast chicken for a different take on a roast
• The perfect accompaniment to this Harvest salad

More Potato Recipes

• Classic mashed potatoes and leeks
• Creamy potato bake
• Bacon fried potatoes
• Shoe string fries
• Parmesan parmentiers
• Loaded crispy potato balls

How To make Spicy Roasted Red Potatoes

Ingredients

• Potatoes Enough for 6 people, peeled and chopped
• 4 tbsp Olive oil
• 2 tbsp Semolina
• 2 heaped tsp Smoked paprika
• 1 heaped tsp Sweet paprika
• 1 tsp Chilli powder Or chilli flakes whizzed in the processor. Adjust quantity as required

Instructions

• Put your oven onto high and line a baking tray with greaseproof paper
• Put a pan of water on to boil and par boil your potatoes for 10 minutes until the edges start to break down
• Drain your potatoes and pop them back in the pan. Gently shake them round the pan until the edges become fluffy
• Put the spices into a bowl and combine
• Sprinkle the spice mix over the potatoes and shake the pan again making sure all the potatoes are covered in the spice mix
• Add the olive oil to the potatoes and gently shake the pan again making sure the potatoes are covered in oil
• Put the potatoes onto the baking tray giving them plenty of space so they have room to crisp up
• Cook for 15 minutes and then take the tray out and turn the potatoes
• Turn your oven to medium and continue cooking for another 15 minutes
• Serve immediately

Spicy Roasted Red Potato Recipe