Ingredients

• 2kg Yukon Gold Potatoes (washed, peeled and cut)
• 150g Unsalted Butter
• 100ml Olive Oil
• 3 Bay Leaves
• Salt

Instructions:

1. Fill a large pot about 2/3 full with cold water and add your bay leaves along with a large pinch of salt to your water.  Cook under high heat until the water comes to a boil.  Carefully add your potatoes to the boiling salted water and turn down the heat to a medium high.  Cook for approximately 45mins or until the potatoes are tender and cooked through.
2. Strain your potatoes through a colander and allow to stand for a few mins to steam and allow the excess moisture to evaporate.  Remove and discard your bay leaves.
3. Preheat your oven to 425ºF, and place a large sheet pan in the oven to heat through.
4. Remove your hot sheet pan from the oven, and add your olive oil and butter. Add your potatoes to the pan and coat them in the butter and oil emulsion and place them cut side down on the pan.  Season with salt and pepper.
5. Place your pan with potatoes back into the oven and roast them for 45mins-1hr until golden and crispy all over.
6. Remove your potatoes from the oven and place onto a serving dish before serving.

Notes:

• If Yukon Gold potatoes are unavailable, another good variety for roasting are Russet potatoes.
• I like using bay leaves as a seasoning when I’m parboiling the potatoes, as their bittersweet aromas matches well with the earthiness of the potatoes.  Alternatively, you can swap the bay leaves with another herb of your choosing, such as rosemary, thyme, sage, etc.  
• When checking to see if your potatoes are cooked through after being boiled, pierce them with a small sharp knife.  The potatoes should have little to no resistance as their being pierced.
• In order for your potatoes to cook evenly, it’s important that their cut evenly so that they’re all relatively the same shape and size.  If you have large potatoes, cut them into quarters or thirds, medium sized potatoes in half and small ones left whole.
• It’s important to use olive oil or another type of oil such as vegetable or canola oil and not just pure butter when roasting your potatoes.  The reason being that if you use straight butter, the butter would burn from the high temperature and long cooking time.  So the addition of the oil prevents that from happening.  The only exception would be if you used “clarified butter” or “ghee” which is butter that has had it’s milk solids removed.  This raises the temperature of it’s smoke point, which is the temperature at which the butter starts to burn.  
• It’s best to use a large and wide surface sheet pan, so that when you roast your potatoes all of them are laying in one single layer and are in direct contact with the surface of the pan.  This will help them cook and crisp up better.  If you don’t have a large sheet pan, and only a smaller roasting pan where your potatoes are crowded and bunched up together.  You can compensate by roasting them all together till their about 70% of the way cooked and than finish them off under the broiler in batches so that their all cooked and evenly browned.
• You place your potatoes cut side down in order to increase the amount of surface area that is in contact with the hot pan, which will help your potatoes in coming out nice and golden brown.  If you place your potatoes on a rounded side down, only a minimal amount of surface would be in contact with the hot pan.  So the end result wouldn’t be as good. 
• The cooking time will vary based on the size, shape, age, etc of the potatoes.  So use these instructions as a guide and check your potatoes periodically as you cook them.
• It’s important that you check the seasoning of your potatoes when you’re done roasting them as the potatoes contain a lot of starch, which tends to hide/mask salty flavours.