Serious Eats: Recipes
Dinner Tonight: Sausage, Potato, and Mushroom Roast
A friend of mine recently gave me a bag of homegrown fingerling potatoes from her father's garden in Iowa, where he grows vegetables for his restaurant and always donates extras to his children. With more than enough to go around, I was the lucky recipient of my own stash. I immediately wanted to roast them and preserve their lovely small size. While any big potato can be cut into strips or mashed, the fingerling would be wasted on these methods. As a waxy potato, it forms a crisp brown crust when roasted while the interior goes creamy.
To make it a full meal, I bought a couple sausages (one per person is about right) and used half a box of mushrooms with the idea of cobbling together a roast. The potatoes went in first because they take the longest, then I pulled out the roasting tray, scattered the mushrooms about, and nestled the sausages in snugly. The sausages leaked their wonderful fat into the tray, which helped crisp the potatoes. The mushrooms sucked up the rest. The result was the hearty stuff of fall days, with barely more effort than turning on the oven and tossing everything in.
Sausage, Potato, and Mushroom Roast
About the author: Blake Royer founded The Paupered Chef with Nick Kindelsperger, where he writes about food and occasional travels. After spending a year in Estonia, he now lives in Chicago.