Greek Lemon Potatoes

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Definitely a cut above the usual roasted potatoes! The unique thing about Greek Lemon Potatoes is that they are cooked in a heavily flavoured lemon garlic broth so they suck up all that flavour before roasting to golden perfection. They’re utterly addictive!
Welcome back to the final instalment of GREEK WEEK!!! We started the week with Greek Chicken marinated in the most incredible yogurt marinade, served up a big pan of homemade Greek Baklava on Wednesday and we’re finishing up the week with the much anticipated Greek Lemon Potatoes!
We’re serving all these with a side of fresh Greek Salad and Tzatziki for dolloping (in the Greek Chicken recipe).
Plate smashing is optional – but loads of garlic in everything is not!
Let’s be clear about one thing up front:

THESE ARE NOT YOUR USUAL ROASTED POTATOES

Don’t get me wrong. Throw spuds in the oven drizzled with oil, salt and pepper, and I’ll happily munch my way through them.
Make the effort to follow a few extra steps to make the crunchiest roast potatoes you’ve ever had, and it’s like all my Christmases have come at once. Thick, craggy crusts, perfectly seasoned, fluffy insides.
But these roasted Greek Lemon Potatoes….

HOW I CUT POTATOES FOR THIS RECIPE

We want chunky pieces for this recipe so they hold up to the relatively long cooking time. I cut medium potatoes into 3 pieces, as pictured below, and large potatoes into quarters or thick wedges.

HALF BRAISED, HALF ROASTED

The idea behind Greek Lemon Potatoes is that they are braised in a lemon-garlic flavoured broth so they suck up all that flavour, then you continue roasting them until the liquid evaporates, leaving behind just the oil to roast the potatoes until golden.
The concept sounds easy enough, but actually, it’s quite tricky to do in one pan. I swear, it’s scientifically impossible to roast potatoes until golden without the garlic burning. It’s one or the other – golden garlic or golden potatoes (unless, like I do with my Herb Roasted Potatoes, you add the garlic midway through cooking).
Also, I kept ending up with burnt ridges on the potato from the lemon juice and broth that caramelises on the base of the pan, and a disappointing lack of golden crusts promised by recipes I used.
After two, three, five, seven attempts, I threw every recipe I read out the window (virtually) and settled on an easier, less risky way of making Greek Lemon Potatoes so they come out as golden as possible: Braise in one pan to suck up flavour, transfer to a tray to bake until golden, drizzled with the flavoured oil from Pan 1.

HOW TO MAKE GREEK LEMON POTATOES (MY SAFER WAY)

You can skip the transference step if you want. But just be mindful that you’ll need to keep a super close eye on the potatoes and they won’t be as golden as you see in these photos, you’ll likely end up with thin dark burnt ridges and the garlic with burn (gee, I’m really making this sound appetising! 😂)

IN THE INTEREST OF TOTAL TRANSPARENCY…

Because I hate recipes that lie, I want to be 100% clear about expectations: these are not the crispiest roast potatoes in the world. I truly think it’s scientifically impossible to get seriously crispy roast potatoes once they’ve been submerged in all that lemon and broth (believe me, I tried my heart out!).
So if seriously crunchy potatoes is what you are after – and I’m talking seriously thick crunchy crust and they stay crisp for ages – use this recipe: Truly Crunchy Roast Potatoes.
But these Greek Lemon Potatoes do have nice crispy edges and some crispy surfaces (see video and photos) and in any case, you won’t miss major crunch factor because these have so much more flavour than any other roasted potato.
It was actually scary how much of these I was able to consume in one sitting. I just couldn’t stop – they are so darn good!! – Nagi x

WATCH HOW TO MAKE IT