Roasted Potatoes

I threw some roasted potatoes together to go with our dinner of turkey burgers last night. Tim loves red potatoes, and so I bought a bag, and this is what I decided to do with them:

3lbs of red potatoes
Kosher Salt
Pepper
Fresh Chives
Dried Parsley
1/4 C Basil Olive Oil
Fresh Minced Garlic

You will notice in the above list of ingredients that only two things have an exact amount. Those are the important ratios, just do everything else to taste. I definitely made this up as I went along, so I would encourage you to use whatever flavors you like, omit anything you don't like or don't have on hand.


Pre heat your oven to 400 degrees


Scrub and halve your potatoes. Some red potatoes can be pretty big, so quarter those. Your main objective here is to get them all to be about the same size so that they cook evenly. They should also be somewhere close to bite size.




















Put the cut potatoes into a large bowl and pour in the 1/4 C Olive Oil. Our olive oil has basil in it, and it is really really good, but you can use regular olive oil as well, it won't make a huge difference.

Now you are going to add in all of your seasonings, and toss the potatoes until they are evenly coated.




































I am not sure what you call the garlic tool pictured above; it was a very early birthday present from my mom and my sister, and I have used it almost every day since i got it about 2 weeks ago! You get a lot more usable garlic-per-clove and it has a much better flavor than normal minced garlic.
Do you see those beautiful chives in there? I chopped those off of a chive plant that is sitting in my kitchen window, courtesy of my mother-in-law.
I have a great family that encourages my love for feeding people :-)
















































After you toss everything together and it all looks like it is mixed evenly, spread the potatoes on a cookie sheet, the kind with raised edges, so that the oil does not spill off, and toss 'em in the oven for 20 minutes. After 20 minutes, take the potatoes out and mix them around, put them back in for another 10 minutes. Now take them out, and check if they are done. How will you know they are done? They will be brown and crispy on the outside, and soft on the inside. If you cannot easily stick a fork through them, they are not done. If needed, stick them in the oven for one more 10 minute round, they should be done after that. If you are waiting for the rest of the meal to be prepared, turn the oven off and leave the potatoes in the oven with door closed until you are ready to eat. This will keep them warm.

Here is what our dinner looked like, on a beautiful spring evening:

















Here we are, well minus me, eating our dinner outside. Yay!

















From Left: Anna, Brian, Tim, and Joka in the background
Brian and Anna are recently engaged. Be excited for them!

And then the guys cleaned up while I leisurely stood by taking pictures. This never happens. It was really nice



















I wish every night could be like last night. The end.