Salt-Roasted Baby Potatoes with Sour Cream Horseradish Sauce

Salt-Roasted Baby Potatoes with Sour Cream Horseradish Sauce makes a fun side dish or party appetizer!  Salt-roasting makes the skins super crispy, the interior beautifully creamy and it’s the perfect cooking method for baby or “peewee” potatoes.

The inspiration behind this recipe:

This recipe is one of those times that the cooking geek really comes out in me.

I recently picked up a copy of a cookbook from Better Homes and Gardens entitled Fresh:  Recipes for Enjoying Ingredients at Their Peak in the Barnes & Noble sale area.  This recipe caught my eye because it was so unusual.  As with most Better Homes and Gardens recipes, they are all tested pretty well before being published.

Dear Better Homes and Gardens:  This recipe needed some extra testing.

Salt-roasting potatoes–covering them up in a massive amount of salt and roasting them–is not new.  You won’t find many recipes online for skillet salt-roasting, however.  Salt-roasting, whether done in the oven or stovetop requires a very large amount of salt but you don’t consume the salt so ignore the sodium count in the nutritional analysis.

The first time I made the recipe, I used regular small red new potatoes.  The second time, I used these adorable tiny potatoes that you may have noticed popping up in produce departments recently referred to as “peewee” potatoes.  I preferred the result from the “peewee” potatoes over the slightly larger ones because they cooked faster.

The Better Homes and Gardens recipe calls for fennel or caraway seeds in the salt.  After reading the result The Kitchn got which was no flavor from either the fennel or their use of coriander seeds, I thought I’d try something fresh like rosemary sprigs.  The rosemary sprigs didn’t flavor the potatoes at all either and I ended up with “smoked” rosemary which honestly was not that pleasant.  So instead, I went with plain old kosher salt and it’s the only way to go.

How to make Salt-Roasted Baby Potatoes with Sour Cream Horseradish Sauce:

• Start with approximately 2 pounds of baby or “peewee” potatoes.

• Pour 4 cups of the most inexpensive kosher salt you can find into a large cast iron skillet.  It’s important to use a cast iron skillet because of the dry heat.  And don’t worry, your skillet will be fine as long as you don’t store or let the salt sit in it overnight.
• Preheat the skillet and the salt over medium heat for 5 minutes.
• Nestle the potatoes into the salt, being careful the potatoes don’t touch the bottom of the skillet.  There needs to be some salt between the heat of the skillet and the potato or you’ll end up with blackened potatoes.

• Sprinkle a little salt over the potatoes.
• Cover with heavy-duty aluminum foil and another large cover.

• Cook over medium-low heat for 35 to 40 minutes.
• Turn off the heat and let the potatoes stand for 5 minutes.

• That’s it!  Skillet salt-roasted baby potatoes!  Divinely crispy skins with a creamy interior.  Mwaaahhhh!

For the most part, the potatoes come right out of the salt, however, you may need to brush the salt off of a few.  After removing the excess salt, you could drizzle with good, fruity olive oil or toss with butter and sprinkle with fresh herbs and freshly cracked black pepper.

I love sour cream with roasted potatoes but I also think horseradish and potatoes are a match made in heaven so I created this sour cream horseradish sauce.  It’s super easy and can be mixed up while the potatoes roast.

That’s it!  Skillet Salt-Roasted Baby Potatoes with Sour Cream Horseradish Sauce!

I know you’re probably wondering then what to do with all that salt!  Here are some ideas:

• Use in a simple brine for chicken or turkey
• Sprinkle over an icy patch on your sidewalk, driveway, or patio.
• Keep in a bucket in your kitchen to put out a small fire.

Be sure to try these other delicious potato recipes:

• Perfect Roasted Potato Wedges
• Patatas Bravas Chilenos
• Oven Fries with Spicy Pesto Aioli
• Rosemary Garlic Crushed Potatoes with Lemon – Chive Aioli