Updated 5 June 2026
For a classic roast potato you want a floury variety: Maris Piper or King Edward, with Rooster a respectable third. But the quiet discovery in our kitchen this year is that a bag of organic potatoes, roasted in their skins, beats all three for effort — fifteen minutes of par-boiling, no peeler in sight, and the skins crisp up better than the flesh does.
The classics: Maris Piper and King Edward
Ask any butcher, chef or grandmother and you will get one of two answers. Maris Piper is the workhorse: dry, floury flesh that roughs up beautifully after par-boiling and crisps in hot fat almost out of spite. It is the most widely grown potato in Britain, which means it is also the easiest to actually find on a Saturday morning.
King Edward is the connoisseur’s choice — the highest dry matter of the supermarket varieties, which translates as the fluffiest interior known to Sunday lunch. The catch is fragility. Leave a King Edward in the boiling water a minute too long and it dissolves into the makings of soup. If your par-boiling tends to happen while you are also refereeing a dispute about whose turn it is on the trampoline, Maris Piper forgives; King Edward does not.
Rooster, with its pink-red skin, sits somewhere between the two — floury enough to roast well, robust enough to survive a distracted cook. A perfectly good answer if it is what the farm shop has.
What to buy when the bag doesn’t say
Supermarket own-label bags often refuse to name the variety, which is unhelpful of them. The decode: anything sold as a roasting, baking or “fluffy” potato will be a floury type and will do the job. Anything labelled salad, baby or waxy will hold its shape stubbornly and refuse to fluff — lovely boiled with mint and butter, wrong for roasties. In high summer, halved new potatoes roasted skin-on are a different dish altogether, and a good one, but they are not the crisp-and-fluffy article we are discussing here.
For the full picture beyond roasting — floury versus waxy explained, a variety-by-variety table and which potato suits which dish — see our full guide to UK potato varieties.
The peeling problem
Here is the honest objection to the classics: unless we can find them organic, we peel them, and peeling a kilo and a half of Maris Pipers is a fifteen-minute job nobody is given credit for. On a slow Sunday with Radio 4 on, it is almost meditative. On the Sundays we actually have — lunch for six, a child to collect from swimming, the dog eyeing the beef — it is the step that breaks the schedule.
The discovery: roast them in their skins
The answer turned out to be sitting on the shelf in Waitrose. Duchy Organic British Potatoes come in a thick paper bag, and the potatoes inside are clean enough that no peeling — and barely any scrubbing — is required. Cut them up, boil them, roast them, skins and all. The skins turn deeply crisp and savoury in the oven, like the best corner of a jacket potato, and the whole job loses its most tedious step.
Two incidental pleasures. The paper bag is exactly the right weight for lighting the log burner afterwards, which feels like the sort of thrift our grandmothers would approve of. And because the potatoes go in skin-on, there is no bowl of peelings silently reproaching you from the worktop.
The method: skin-on roast potatoes
This is the routine as we actually do it, timed so the potatoes look after themselves while you deal with everything else lunch involves.
- Cut, don’t peel. Halve small potatoes, quarter larger ones, skins on.
- Par-boil for about 15 minutes in well-salted water — a little longer than for peeled potatoes, and the skins hold everything together.
- Drain into a colander and let them steam for 15 minutes. This is the step that makes them crisp: a dry surface roasts, a wet one stews. Resist the urge to hurry it.
- Meanwhile, heat the tray. Put a sturdy baking tray with a thin covering of olive oil into the oven to preheat. The potatoes should sizzle as they land.
- Roast at 180–200°C for about an hour, until deep gold and the skins are crisp.
Allow roughly 250g of potatoes per person, with a margin for the people who say they only want a few and then take five. Olive oil is our everyday fat and earns its place; goose fat remains the high-days-and-holidays upgrade, but with skins involved the olive oil version wants for nothing.
As for what to serve them with: they were made for Nigella’s Spanish chicken with chorizo, and a pan of Chantenay carrots alongside completes the argument.
Frequently asked questions
Do you have to peel potatoes for roasting?
No. Skin-on roast potatoes work beautifully — the skins crisp in the hot fat and add flavour. We prefer organic potatoes for roasting in their skins; with conventionally grown ones, we tend to peel out of habit. Either way, cut them down to size and par-boil before roasting.
What if I can’t find Maris Piper or King Edward?
Buy any bag labelled roasting, baking or fluffy — these are floury varieties and will fluff and crisp properly. Avoid anything sold as salad, baby or waxy potatoes, which hold their shape and stay dense rather than going fluffy inside.
Why don’t my roast potatoes go crispy?
Three usual culprits: the potatoes went into the oven wet (steam-dry them in the colander for a good 15 minutes), the tray wasn’t hot (preheat it with the oil so the potatoes sizzle on contact), or the tray is overcrowded (give them space in a single layer — two trays beat one congested one).
Olive oil or goose fat?
Olive oil is our everyday choice and gives a clean, crisp result, particularly with skin-on potatoes. Goose fat runs hotter and tastes richer — worth it for Christmas lunch, not obligatory for an ordinary Sunday.
Can I par-boil the potatoes ahead of time?
Yes. Par-boil and steam-dry them earlier in the day, then leave them uncovered in the colander or on a tray. They can go into the preheated oil whenever the rest of lunch dictates — a useful trick when oven space and timing are against you.
Roasties are only half a supper, of course. If sausages are on the menu, see our guide to cooking sausages in the air fryer — the exact time and temperature for every type, fresh or frozen.
New: see our roast chicken timer and Sunday lunch timing plan for the reverse-timed countdown that gets every part of the roast to the table at once. For a crowd, how to cook a gammon joint makes a cheaper centrepiece than beef, and our roast potatoes are its natural partner.
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