Salt-Crusted Potatoes with Spicy Garlic Sauce
Potatoes Fasting Recipes Budget Recipes Spanish Vegetables Sauces and Salsa
Potatoes boiled in seawater. Papas arrugadas (wrinkled potatoes) is a traditional dish from the Canary Islands (Spain). The star, however, is the spicy sauce. I'd eat it on bread 🤤 Or on cornmeal-crusted fish.
Ingredients
1 kg small potatoes
2 tablespoons sea salt (about 30 g)
Spicy Garlic Sauce (Mojo Picon)
5 garlic cloves
1 heaping tablespoon ground hot pepper in oil
1/2 roasted bell pepper (optional; use if your hot pepper paste is super hot)
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
3/4 teaspoon smoked paprika
a little coarse salt
50 ml olive oil
1-2 teaspoons sherry vinegar (or red wine vinegar)
Servings: 2-3
How to prepare salt-crusted potatoes with spicy garlic sauce
- In a mortar, crush the garlic with a little coarse salt until you get a fine paste. Add the paprika and cumin and blend with the pestle. Add the ground hot peppers and mix with a spoon. Slowly pour in oil while stirring until you have the consistency of a sauce that flows slowly off the spoon. Season the sauce with vinegar. If you let the sauce sit for at least a few hours at room temperature, the flavor will improve.
* when done, taste the sauce; if it's too hot for your taste (depends on how hot you made the ground peppers in oil), "dilute" it with roasted red pepper made into a paste; add gradually until you reach the desired heat level; if the sauce has become too thick, add a little more oil.
** the sauce can be blended in a food processor if you want it very smooth and more emulsified - Choose potatoes as small as possible (so they absorb salt all the way to the center) and roughly the same size so they cook at the same time. Prepare only as many potatoes as will fit in your pot in a single layer. Wash the potatoes well. You can scrub them with a steel wool pad, but don't peel them.
- Place the potatoes in the pot and add just enough water to cover them (I used 800 ml water). For this amount of water, I added 30 g sea salt.
- Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to low for a gentle simmer. When the potatoes are done (stick a fork in one and if it goes in easily it's ok; mine took just over 20 minutes), turn the heat to high to evaporate the water faster. Let it boil until the water has completely evaporated (about 15 minutes for this amount of water).
- At that point, reduce heat to low and keep the potatoes in the pot just until the salt crust dries completely. During this time, gently turn the potatoes to the other side so they dry all over. After about 5 minutes, the skin is dry and the salt falls off easily if you rub it.
- Remove the potatoes from the pot. Serve warm with spicy garlic sauce and/or salsa verde. When serving, rub the potato skins to remove some of the salt. Leave just as much salt as you like.
Potatoes in salted water
After about 25 minutes they're done, turn heat to high
Finally, potatoes are covered in salt crust
