Crispy Smashed Potatoes With Gochujang Aioli

Chef's Overview

Dear Chefs, a smashed potato is an attempt to solve an old problem, which is that a roasted potato only has so much surface area and surface area is where all the good parts live. Boil them soft, flatten them under the bottom of a glass, and suddenly one potato has four or five times the crisp edge it started with, plus a creamy interior that roasting alone never produces. The gochujang aioli is doing the other half of the work, bringing fermented chili heat and enough acid to keep a tray of fried starch from feeling heavy. There are exactly three stages and the first two can happen hours ahead of the third. It is the side dish that consistently outperforms whatever it was supposed to accompany, which is a problem you will have to solve for yourself.

Why Flattening a Potato Changes Everything

Crispness in the oven is a surface phenomenon and nothing else. A whole roasted potato has a smooth exterior and a fixed amount of contact with hot metal and hot air, which caps how much browning can possibly happen no matter how long you leave it in there. Smashing a boiled potato tears the surface into ridges, cracks and thin frayed edges, and every one of those is a new site for crisping.

Boiling first is the step people are tempted to skip and it is the one that makes the method work at all. Moist heat gelatinizes the starch throughout the potato so the inside is already fully cooked and creamy before it ever meets the oven, which means the oven's only job is browning the outside. Roast a raw potato and the interior needs so much time that the exterior overcooks waiting for it. Boil, smash, roast hot, and each stage does precisely one thing.

Ingredients You'll Need

Small waxy potatoes are essential, since a floury russet disintegrates the moment you press on it while a Yukon Gold or a baby red holds together and still goes creamy inside. Aim for potatoes around two inches across so they cook evenly and smash to a consistent thickness. Gochujang varies a lot in heat and sweetness between brands, so taste yours before committing to the amount and adjust upward rather than down.

For the Potatoes

• 2 lbs small Yukon Gold or baby red potatoes
• 1/4 cup kosher salt, for the boiling water
• 4 tbsp olive oil, or 3 tbsp duck fat if you have it
• 1 tsp flaky salt
• 1/2 tsp black pepper

For the Gochujang Aioli

• 3/4 cup good mayonnaise
• 2 tbsp gochujang
• 1 garlic clove, grated on a microplane
• 1 tbsp rice vinegar
• 2 tsp toasted sesame oil
• 1 tsp honey
• Squeeze of lime

To Finish

• 3 scallions, sliced thin on a bias
• 1 tbsp toasted sesame seeds
• Handful of cilantro leaves

Step 1: Sort the Potatoes by Size Before They Go In

Tip the bag onto the board and separate the potatoes into rough size groups, halving any that are considerably larger than the rest so everything finishes boiling at the same moment. Mixed sizes are the usual reason a tray comes out with some potatoes falling apart and others still firm. Halve them straight down through the middle rather than at an angle, which gives you two flat faces that smash evenly later.

Step 2: Boil Them in Aggressively Salted Water

Put the potatoes in cold water with a quarter cup of salt and bring them up to a simmer rather than dropping them into boiling water, which cooks the outside long before the center. Simmer for fifteen to twenty minutes until a knife tip slides in with no resistance at all, and err on the side of slightly overdone, since a firm potato will refuse to smash. The water should taste like seawater, because this is the only chance the interior gets to be seasoned.

Step 3: Dry Them Thoroughly, Then Let Them Cool

Drain the potatoes and leave them in the colander for ten minutes so the residual heat drives off the surface moisture, then spread them on a towel-lined tray. Wet potatoes steam in the oven and never crisp, and this ten minutes of doing nothing has more effect on the final texture than the oil does. They can sit at room temperature for a couple of hours at this point, which is where the make-ahead break lives.

Step 4: Smash Them to About Half an Inch

Set the potatoes on an oiled sheet pan with space between them and press each one down with the flat bottom of a glass or a measuring cup until it is roughly half an inch thick. Press slowly and stop when the edges crack, since going too thin produces a chip rather than a potato with a creamy middle. A few ragged fragments falling off is a good sign, as those bits crisp into the best part of the tray.

Step 5: Slice the Scallions and Prep the Garnishes

Cut the scallions at a sharp bias into thin ovals, keeping the white and green parts separate so you can scatter the mild green over the top and save the stronger white for the aioli if you want it. Thin bias slices need a blade that comes straight down without pushing the scallion across the board, and our Ochre 61 Damascus Nakiri Knife is built exactly for that motion, which is explained in How Nakiri Knives Support Straight-Down Cutting Motion. Pick the cilantro leaves off the stems by hand and leave them whole.

Step 6: Whisk the Aioli

Combine the mayonnaise, gochujang, grated garlic, rice vinegar, sesame oil and honey in a bowl and whisk until the color is uniform, then finish with lime and taste it. It should be noticeably sharper and spicier than seems comfortable on a spoon, because it is about to be spread on fried starch which dulls everything. Grating the garlic rather than mincing it matters here, since raw garlic pieces in a cold sauce are a harsh surprise, and a small blade handles the peeling and trimming that comes first in the way described in What Paring Knives Do Better Than Larger Blades. Our Noir 60 Damascus Paring Knife takes the skin off a clove in one pass without wasting half of it.

Step 7: Oil Generously and Roast at 450°F

Brush or drizzle the oil over the smashed potatoes, getting into the cracks and cratered surfaces where the crisping will happen, then season with flaky salt and pepper. Roast for twenty five minutes, flip each one carefully with a thin spatula, and give them another ten to fifteen until both faces are deep golden and the frayed edges have gone dark. Do not crowd the pan and do not open the oven repeatedly, since both of those trap steam and cost you the texture.

Step 8: Assemble Immediately Before Serving

Spread the aioli across the bottom of a platter rather than drizzling it over the potatoes, which keeps the crisp surfaces dry and gives people something to drag each potato through. Pile the potatoes on top, scatter the scallions, sesame seeds and cilantro, and add one more pinch of flaky salt. They hold their crunch for about fifteen minutes on the counter, so this is the last thing you do before everybody sits down.

Three Stages, Two of Them Optional Tonight

What makes this worth keeping in regular rotation is that it splits so cleanly across time. Boil and dry the potatoes in the morning, whisk the aioli whenever, and the only part that has to happen while people are hungry is thirty five minutes of unattended roasting. Vegetable prep like the scallions and garlic is where a fast blade quietly saves you the most minutes across a week of cooking, which is the argument in Why Nakiri Knives Excel at Fast Vegetable Prep. Make them once for a crowd and you will be asked to bring them to everything.