Salt Baked New Potatoes With Pink Peppercorn Butter Recipes

PERFECT SALT BAKED POTATOES

Steps:

• 1. Preheat oven to 450'F
• 2. With a vegetable brush rinse and scrub down 4 russet potatoes. Set on a paper towel to dry completely.
• 3. In a 13X9X2 inch baking dish pour out your salt and spread evenly. Bury your three rosemary sprigs in the salt in three separate locations. Make sure there is a decent amount of space between sprigs.
• 4. Take your garlic and clean off the outer layer of papers from it. With a sharp knife cut just the very tip-pity top of the garlic bulb off to expose a bit of the garlic's flesh.
• 5. Set the garlic bulb in a corner of the pan, burying it in the salt a tiny bit.
• 6. Take each cleaned and dried potato and bury in half way in the salt. DO NOT COMPLETELY COVER... only half way, sort of nestled in there. Make sure there is at least an inch in between each potato.
• 7. Cover the baking dish with foil and seal tightly.
• 8. Bake on the center wrack for 75 minutes.
• 9. After the 75 minutes, take the baking dish out of the oven. Remove the garlic bulb (carefully, it hot!) and set it aside.
• 10. Raise oven temperature to 500'F
• 11. Brush the top of each potato with extra virgin olive oil.
• 12. Put baking dish back in oven for 15 minutes.
• 13. Meanwhile, once garlic is cool enough to handle, squeeze the roasted garlic out of the bulb. It will come out like a paste.
• 14. Cream your butter with the garlic paste.
• 15. Finely mince a teaspoon of fresh rosemary. Pour it in the butter. Add pepper to the butter and mix.
• 16. Remove potatoes once they are done, let cool for 5 minutes then carefully remove from salt. The salt will be molten hot, be careful!
• 17. With a clean dish towel wipe excess salt off the potatoes. Serve with garlic butter! Yum!

SALT-BAKED NEW POTATOES WITH PINK-PEPPERCORN BUTTER

Steps:

• Heat the oven to 400 degrees. Wash the potatoes.
• In a large bowl, mix the salt, rosemary needles, peppercorns and 1 cup water together with your hands, crushing the peppercorns a little between your fingers and bruising the rosemary needles to release their sticky oil, making a moist, fragrant and pink-and-green speckled sand. (You might have to add a few splashes of water if the mixture needs more moisture to feel like wet sand.)
• Transfer a little less than half this salt mixture into the bottom of a wide, shallow, heavy ovenproof skillet or casserole to make a salt bed about 1/2-inch thick.
• Nestle the potatoes into the sand, close to one another but not quite touching, if possible.
• Pack the rest of the salt mixture over the nestled potatoes, and rub and brush and smooth it with your hands until you have tightly encased the potatoes in a little salt sarcophagus. The rounded tops of the potatoes will just show as bumps under the salt cast.
• Bake the potatoes for 30 to 40 minutes, until a cake tester easily pierces the potatoes and tests warm on your chin or the back of your hand. The salt casing will dry and harden like clay - and smell delicious while baking.
• While the potatoes roast, prepare the compound butter: Grind the peppercorns in a mortar and pestle with the whole branches of rosemary to create an oily, coarse powder. Remove the bruised rosemary sprigs, shaking off any clinging pink peppercorns, and discard. (You just want to extract the oily flavor from the rosemary, not the needles themselves.) In a small bowl, mash the oily peppercorn powder with the salted butter using a fork until well blended.
• To serve, rap the salt-packed potatoes forcefully on a sturdy surface that can handle it, to crack the salt crust from the force. A few solid raps will loosen the potatoes inside. If the cast needs a little more help, use a regular dinner knife like a spade to just pop open the salt crust along its fault lines. The potatoes are easily plucked from the dry salt. Set out with the compound butter in a small bowl on the side.

CRISPY SALT AND PEPPER POTATOES

Steps:

• Preheat oven to 400°F and line a rimmed baking sheet with parchment. In a large bowl, whisk the egg whites until foamy (there shouldn't be any liquid whites in the bowl). Add the potatoes and toss until they're well coated with the egg whites, then transfer to a strainer or colander and let the excess whites drain. Season the potatoes with the salt, pepper, and herbs. Scatter the potatoes on the baking sheet (make sure they're not touching) and roast until the potatoes are very crispy and tender when poked with a knife, about 20 minutes (depending on the size of the potatoes).
• Transfer to a bowl and serve.