Easy Garlic Roasted Potatoes (2024)

Garlic Roasted Potatoes are a delicious treat with a crispy exterior and a fluffy inside. The roasted garlic adds a buttery, nutty flavor that enhances the overall savory goodness of this classic dish. It’s the perfect blend of textures and tastes, making it a delightful side for any meal.

Just like in this Roasted Garlic Butternut Squash Soup, we are slow-roasting the garlic in its skin so it becomes butter-soft. Garlic loses all its spiciness and strong taste when you roast it. No worries no strong body odor or bad breath no matter how many cloves you eat this way.

Ingredients and Substitutions

• Potatoes – my favorite potatoes for roasted potatoes are actually yellow potatoes. They are semi-starchy. You can also use potatoes with less starch such as fingerlings, new potatoes, or red-skinned potatoes. Those will give you crispier results. What I love about the yellow potatoes is that they are crispy on the outside but soft and fluffy on the inside after roasting. Whatever you do, don’t use high-starch potatoes such as white potatoes often used for mashed potatoes.
• Garlic – peel the garlic out of the papery skin but not the actual hard skin around the clove. The skin is what protects the clove from burning and what helps it slow-roast. If you want to use already peeled garlic, chop it up finely, mix it with a little olive oil, and add it only 20 minutes before the potatoes are finished roasting.
• Rosemary – use hardy herbs such as Rosemary, or thyme, or a combination of both to infuse your garlic roasted potatoes. Leave them whole on the sprig so you can remove them after. In a pinch you could also use dried herbs.
• Seasoning – keep it simple with just salt, pepper, and olive oil so the potatoes and garlic can shine.

How To Make Garlic Roasted Potatoes In Six Easy Steps

1. Brush your potatoes clean under cold running water and a firm bristle brush.
2. Cut the potatoes into bite-size pieces.
3. Peel garlic out of its papery skin but leave the cloves in their hard skin.
4. Please cut-up potatoes and garlic cloves in a baking dish large enough so they can be spread out in one layer.
5. Season with sea salt, pepper, and olive oil and work oil and seasoning in with your hands making sure every single piece is well-coated from all sides.
6. Add a sprig of rosemary and place in the 400F preheated oven for 45-50 minutes.

Frequently asked questions

Is it necessary to boil potatoes before roasting?

No. As long as you roast them long enough and in one layer, not stacked, they will cook through perfectly in the oven.

How do you not burn garlic when roasting potatoes?

By leaving garlic cloves in their skin they don’t burn but instead roast and become super soft and buttery. Alternatively, if you want more of a garlic flavor on your potatoes you can peel and chop the garlic, mix it with olive oil in a little bowl, then add it on top of the potatoes about 20 minutes before the roasting time is over.

Why do my roast potatoes not go crispy?

Your potato pieces need to be super well coated in oil. If you don’t use your hands when mixing in the oil you often miss a few sides and those will dry out and then burn instead of roast.

You also want to make sure your oven heats properly. We need 400F to get the oil to get really hot on the potatoes and make them golden.

And lastly, your potato pieces HAVE to be in one layer and not stacked on top of each other or else too much steam forms and steams the potato instead of roasting it.

How can I cook potatoes without an oven?

I have three ways to make them in the Instant Pot if you need to keep your oven free for your main dish. Check out these Instant Pot Mashed Potatoes, Instant Pot Potatoes all different ways, and Instant Pot Baked Potatoes.