Crispy Pan Fried Potatoes with Toum & Chilli

Name: Crispy Pan Fried Potatoes with Toum & Chilli
Prep time: 5 min
Cook time: 20 min
Total time: 25 min
Ingredients: 125ml Toum (recipe here) or replace with shop bought, seasoned Greek yoghurt or aioli; 500g La Ratte potatoes; Knob butter; 2 Cloves garlic; 1/2 tsp Aleppo pepper or chilli flakes; Zest of 1 lemon; Drizzle of oil; Salt to taste; 2g Dill (optional)

My Crispy Pan Fried Potatoes with Garlic Toum & Chilli is a favourite go-to for a relaxed afternoon snack with friends, especially at this time of year. It requires very little effort and is ready in under 30 minutes. Best enjoyed outdoors with a gentle breeze, great company, and your drink of choice!

This recipe doesn’t require any specialised ingredients, is deliciously moreish without being stodgy, and will become a favourite part of your easy entertaining repertoire.

La Ratte Potatoes

La Ratte potatoes are gourmet potatoes native to France and Denmark. They’re medium sized oblong potatoes, somewhat irregular and bumpy, with a bit of a kink.

The reason I’ve chosen them for this delicious Pan Fried Potato Dish with Toum and Chilli is due to their tender, buttery flavour with gorgeous nutty undertones. And if you can’t find La Ratte potatoes in your part of the world, you could try Yukon Gold, Kipfler potatoes or baby small sized baby potatoes.

Once you’ve boiled them, you crush them gently with the heel of you hand, so as to split the skins so they can better absorb the garlic and buttery lemon flavour while being pan fried.

And to the potato fiends – you know who you are – here are some more fab potato recipes: Crispy Roasted Potatoes with Salted Lemon and Air Fryer Smashed Potatoes.

So Saucy

This recipe calls for Toum, which you can substitute with seasoned Greek Yoghurt or aioli, but trust me on this – Toum literally takes 15 minutes to whip up. It is super easy and the results are sublime.

You can make your Toum while you wait for the potatoes to cook. Then, you get to enjoy a white, silky smooth, creamy, and deliciously garlicky sauce that provides the perfect accompaniment to my pan-fried potatoes.

If that sounds a little too much effort for a lazy afternoon, toum can also be bought in many shops or middle eastern delis! It keeps for ages in the fridge so you can really get to experiment with this delicious little condiment. Check out our toum recipe for more ideas on how to use it in your cooking.

Because Potatoes

Potatoes are universally loved – I mean, they’re the first things Matt Damon cultivated in the movie ‘The Martian’, and honestly, if I was stuck on a remote planet and needed to grow something to eat, potatoes would be my go-to.

Now, everyone knows potatoes contain potassium, but I betcha didn’t know that they’re also rich in Vitamin C. That means they would’ve been an excellent choice for old-time sailors and pirates, too, because they can be stored for extended periods, and vitamin C helped to combat scurvy.

Fun fact: there are now more than 5,000 types of potatoes available, and the earliest recorded potato tuber remains were dated to 2500 BCE to Ancon, in central Peru.

So, as a versatile foodstuff, nothing really comes close to the humble spud. Potatoes can be mashed, baked, fried, boiled and sautéed and have given us chips, crisps, baked potato, utterly delicious parmesan potato stacks, flour and vodka.

Broccoli needs to try harder.

Ready? Let’s get to it.

Rate My Pan Fried Potatoes with Toum & Chilli

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Frequently Asked Questions

Is this recipe gluten-free?

Totes gluten free! Enjoy!

Can I make this vegan?

Absolutely! This recipe can be made vegan-friendly by substituting butter with a plant-based butter and using Toum rNo. These pan fried potatoes are utterly glorious simply made with garlic, butter, salt and lemon zest.