James Martin has urged people to start prepping their roast potatoes now ahead of Christmas, and has shared his go-to recipe for perfectly crispy roasties every time
Alice Sjoberg Social News Reporter
13:34, 26 Nov 2025Updated 13:37, 26 Nov 2025
James Martin has shared his method for the perfect roast potatoes (Image: Getty Images)
Chef James Martin has shared his go-to tips for how to get perfectly roasted potatoes for Christmas Day that you can prepare ahead now.
For many, Christmas dinner is one of the best meals of the year, something they look forward to for months in advance. Because of this, there’s usually high expectations that everything goes as planned when cooking. However, spending hours in the kitchen often doesn’t sound very appealing. To help, chef James Martin has shared his simple tip on how to make sure you get perfectly cooked roast potatoes for your Christmas dinner, that you can start preparing now for less work later.
In an interview, James has shared how you can prep your potatoes now, so all you need to do on Christmas day is pop them in the oven. He then went on to share the step-by-step instruction on how to get them perfectly crispy.
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“What you don’t want with potatoes is you need to make sure the starch is taken off it,” he began. “So, don’t cram the pan full [with potatoes].”
Instead, James went on to say to add plenty of water with a pinch of salt into a pot with the potatoes before bringing them to a boil. Cook them for about three to four minutes before draining them into a colander, before shaking them around to roughen up the edges.
He then went on to reveal that what a lot of chefs would do next is to put them into an oven tray with lard, dripping, or duck fat drizzled on top. Then, instead of putting it into the oven to roast, he recommends putting it into the freezer until Christmas, allowing you to spend less time in the kitchen on Christmas Day.
“And then, when you want them for Christmas, take them out, one hour in the oven,” he said, specifying the oven should be set at 200C.
James went on to recommend putting the potatoes into the oven when your meat is coming out, as the oven would be too hot for the meat. Since most people have a standard conventional oven, it often isn’t big enough to cook both the turkey and all the trimmings at the same time.
The issue with this, James says, is that the big piece of meat creates steam in the oven, which is something you want to avoid when making your roast potatoes. So he said that by cooking the meat beforehand, it removes the steam, allowing the potatoes to roast and get a crispy crust.
“Let [the meat] rest for an hour, which it should do anyway,” James said. “Do not put your potatoes in at the same time as the meat.”
He went on to say that by cooking everything at the same time, it will take longer for everything to cook, and the potatoes won’t crisp up due to the steam.
Dining and Cooking