Get fluffy potatoes (King Edwards are lovely but you have to deal with a lot of crumbling - it's like they mash themselves). I now think Maris Piper are the best; fluffy but they hold together

There's no big secret; really hot fat, parboiled potatoes and that's it

Method

Set the oven to 200-220 and peel the potatoes and if they are big, half them and leave the smaller ones whole. Try to get them all roughly the same size

Put them in a big pan of cold water and sprinkle a little bit of salt in

Bring to the boil and then turn it down to a gentle simmer. 5 minutes should so it but keep checking with a fork. Once the fork can easily get about a quarter of an inch in they are done.

Drain them and let them stand for a minute to dry out a bit

Put the lid back on the pan and while holding it on give it a really good shake to smash up the cooked outsides of the spuds. This will be the crispy bit

Get the really hot fat out of the oven and pour the spuds in (away from you in case it splashes)

Baste them all as quickly as you can - you don't want it all cooling down too much

Put them in the top shelf of the oven for around 40 minutes but it varies

Ingredients

• Potatoes - as many as you need
• Oil (see the tab about cooking fat) to cover the bottom of a roasting tin
• Salt and water

Variations

The ones in the picture had ground cumin and ground turmeric added when they were dry before I shook everything around

But it's really up to you; rosemary goes well (don't add it at the beginning or it will just burn), garlic cloves tucked in around them to flavour the oil a bit, whatever