A frying panful of crispy, spicy slices of chorizo sausage and those cold boiled new potatoes you debated over whether to sling yesterday. And a good job too you didn’t!
I am a potato farmer
New potatoes are always gorgeous, even if unlike me you buy them rather than grow them. Yes, I am now a full-fledged potato farmer, albeit my crop amounts to three rows on the garden plot.
A third year now I planted seed potatoes around Easter time, digging trenches all of my own, then anxiously waiting for the little fat sprouts to come through a couple of weeks later. I swaddled them with soil to keep the babies warm and they gratefully shot upwards and sideways like a mini potato jungle.
When the first blossoms appeared on the early crop plants, I pulled a hoard of the most delightful tiny spuds (with only a little help from a gardening fork and The Weather Man).
I have no Irish roots but am clearly a natural for growing spuds. Agreed, they are not exactly the most difficult crop but I’m not green-fingered otherwise so allow me to be proud, especially that we’ve had no need to buy potatoes from the shops for the last three years. On one occasion we had home grown roasties as late as Christmas Day!
New spuds are a treat
But without a shadow of a doubt it is the first new potatoes that are the most delightful. If you, poor thing, only ever buy them from a supermarket, you don’t know what you’re missing.
They ain’t no asparagus which rapidly deteriorate in flavour within days from picking, but the soil and sand-covered tubers have so much more flavour than ready-washed, that scrubbing and washing them is no chore. Because also you want to scrub them gently, only removing the dirt and leaving the delicious and nutritious skins intact.
Depending on a variety, they’ll take 20-30 minutes of steady boiling and will need only salt, black pepper and copious amounts of butter to dress them for a feast.
Never too many in a boil
If you think you’ve cooked too many new potatoes for a meal, think again. The second best feast with new spuds comes on the following day when you sauté slices until crisp and flavour them at will. Arguably, like with a leftover roast meat, the second coming might be better than the first.
This is just the ticket for using up previous day’s boiled spuds. You can make the dish with old potatoes too, as long as they are not too starchy and keep their shape when sliced.
And the combo of spicy chorizo and crisp potato slices is so good, you might boil a batch just for this purpose. Make sure you let them cool down though, or slicing them will be hard.
How to make crispy chorizo potatoes
A large, heavy frying pan will be needed, as ideally you want to crispen the potatoes in a single layer.
But first the chorizo goes in, to crispen and to render delicious fat and paprika flavour. Buy spicy or mild chorizo according to preference, but bear in mind it doesn’t need to be labelled ‘cooking chorizo’. All chorizo sausages, unless extremely dry and gnarly, can be used in cooking.
Once the chorizo has toasted to your liking, remove it from the pan leaving all the fat in and the heat on medium.
Now the potato slices can be added, to slowly turn burnished and crunchy. It is the fastidious exercise that I love, turning every single slice individually but if you’re impatient, toss them in the pan, taking care not to splatter the fat all around.
The chorizo goes back in now and the dish is ready for serving, except for a sprinkling of fresh herbs.
If you’re generous with chorizo, this may well be filling enough for a main course with a green salad on the side. Or else serve them as an indulgent side to fish or chicken.
More new potato recipes
How to cook and serve new potatoes? Lightly crushed, dressed with garlic, mint and dill with some chopped olives. The best new potatoes are Jersey Royal of course, but pick your own local ones if Jerseys are not available.
Spicy potato salad with bacon and cucumber. This is an excellent salad of spicy bacon and cucumber, mixed with new potatoes and served warm. Cured pork, in case you wondrered, appears often in Chinese cuisine, here paired with Sichuan pepper and chilies.
New potatoes sautéed with spinach. This recipe for sautéed new potatoes has them boiled first and then fried in plenty of butter with spinach and capers.
More chorizo recipes
Roasted sweet potatoes with chorizo and bacon are the perfect blend of sweet, salty and spicy. Served with sour cream topping for a main course, or on its own for a side.
Pan fried monkfish tail in spicy coating, with mushroom sauce and chorizo slices. Monkfish with paprika and chorizo complemented by spiced mushroom sauce makes a super tasty and still a healthy dish.
Chicken, sausage and prawn brown rice jambalaya, Creole style with tomatoes, with homemade mix of Creole seasoning is a wonderful and satisfying dish, even thousands of miles away from Louisiana. Foolproof cooking method: it’s oven baked.