This patatas bravas recipe features fried potatoes with smoky tomato sauce and alioli... what could go wrong?
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00 What's happening, everybody?
00:01 It's Justin here in the Delish Kitchen studios.
00:04 If you've heard of Spanish food,
00:06 it's probably because you've heard of tapas.
00:09 And if you've heard of tapas,
00:10 probably the only one or the most popular one
00:13 that you've had is called batatas bravas.
00:15 That's right.
00:16 They're the little golden, crispity,
00:18 beautiful potato nubbins that's covered
00:21 with like a little spicy sauce
00:23 and some mayo-y deliciousness.
00:25 They're super simple.
00:26 There's a reason why they're in basically
00:27 every tapas bar in Spain or anywhere
00:30 because they're a classic and they're delicious
00:31 and they're super easy to use.
00:33 I really think that this is gonna become
00:34 one of your favorite applications of potatoes
00:37 once you learn how to make them.
00:38 Let's get started.
00:39 (upbeat music)
00:42 For this recipe, we are gonna be using
00:43 your standard Idaho russet potato.
00:47 As you've heard from many people, probably even me,
00:49 the Idaho russet is such a spectacular frying potato.
00:52 It gets that like fluffy, pillowy inside
00:55 and gets a really amazing caramelization,
00:57 golden, beautiful outside, nice and crisp.
00:59 It is the go-to frying potato here in the States,
01:02 so we're gonna use them.
01:03 We're not gonna peel them.
01:04 We're gonna go right in.
01:04 We're gonna chop them.
01:05 We're gonna chop them into pieces
01:06 that are sort of like that perfect breakfast potato size.
01:10 I have some water coming to the boil
01:12 'cause we are going to par-cook these potatoes in
01:15 as I'm doing it, heavily salted water.
01:18 We're gonna go in to this with our potatoes
01:21 once it comes to a boil
01:22 and they're not gonna cook until they're totally done.
01:23 We just want them just past raw.
01:26 So we're gonna cook them for about six to eight minutes.
01:29 Then we're gonna get them out,
01:30 strain and put them on a sheet tray
01:32 so they can cool rather quickly.
01:34 Go the extra mile, spread them all out
01:36 so we can get as much moisture off these as possible.
01:39 There are usually two sauces
01:41 that are added to these potatoes
01:44 and we are going to make the first one,
01:45 which is the Brava sauce, the titular sauce.
01:49 It is a like spicy sauce.
01:51 It's like what old timey cooks would call
01:53 like a piquant sauce, like P-I-Q-U-A-N-T,
01:57 which was like fancy speak for like, it's kind of spicy.
02:02 And that's the reason why it's only kind of spicy
02:04 is because all of the heat is coming from paprika.
02:07 Paprika is an enormously popular
02:09 and well-used spice in Spain.
02:11 We're using three different types.
02:12 We're gonna be using sweet, hot, and smoked.
02:16 That's to sort of mimic the types of paprika
02:18 you're gonna get in Spain.
02:19 All those combined with like,
02:21 if you're using like classic American distinctions
02:24 of paprika will get you close
02:26 to that Spanish paprika flavor.
02:28 The last thing is this sherry vinegar.
02:30 That's like, you could literally,
02:31 even this bottle is said in Spanish,
02:33 vinagre de Jerez.
02:35 That's sherry wine vinegar.
02:36 It's slightly different,
02:37 but if you absolutely can't find it,
02:39 it's most similar to like a red wine vinegar
02:43 or a white wine vinegar.
02:43 You could like combine equal parts
02:45 and that'll get you pretty close.
02:46 You could just put the dried spices
02:49 into cooking tomato sauce and that would be fine.
02:51 But as you do with most spices,
02:53 although some people might even not think to do this
02:55 with powdered dried spices,
02:56 is you wanna toast or bloom the spices.
02:59 So we're gonna cook these off in a little bit of fat.
03:01 So in my little skillet,
03:02 I'm gonna add some olive oil
03:03 and I'm gonna add all three paprikas,
03:05 the hot, smoked, and the sweet.
03:07 And we're just gonna let that cook
03:08 for like 30 seconds to a minute.
03:09 This can burn relatively quickly.
03:11 You wanna move it around.
03:12 You're gonna have your whole kitchen smelling like pepper.
03:14 It's gonna smell amazing.
03:16 Once it's super fragrant,
03:18 should really only take about 15, 30 seconds.
03:20 You're gonna go right in with some tomato sauce,
03:23 a little bit of low sodium chicken stock,
03:25 and a tiny bit of sherry vinegar.
03:27 Then we're gonna stir everything together,
03:29 let it reduce just slightly,
03:30 let those flavors melt together,
03:32 add a little bit of salt.
03:33 This is sort of what you're looking for.
03:35 You're looking for this like brick red color,
03:37 almost if you took tomato sauce and caramelized it
03:40 and reduced it just a little bit till it was darker.
03:41 That's the texture and color you're looking for.
03:44 It smells amazing, blooming spices like that is amazing.
03:47 So I'm gonna set this aside
03:48 and we can get started on our other sauce.
03:50 You've probably heard of aioli, garlic aioli,
03:52 chipotle aioli.
03:54 I gotta be honest with you.
03:55 It's basically just a very fancy way of saying mayo.
03:58 Nowadays, we're making an aioli today,
04:00 but in Spain it's called alioli.
04:02 So to make the alioli,
04:03 it's basically a similar process
04:04 as it would be to making any type of mayonnaise.
04:06 We're gonna start in a bowl with some egg yolks,
04:10 some Dijon mustard, a bit of lemon juice,
04:13 and then crucially to make it alioli,
04:14 we need to add garlic.
04:15 And some people will chop their garlic.
04:17 And I think even this recipe says to,
04:19 but I like to grate my garlic for applications like this.
04:22 It's like a harsher way of breaking down the garlic
04:24 that kind of activates that like sharp flavor in garlic,
04:28 which is, believe it or not,
04:29 what I'm looking for in alioli.
04:30 It's not necessarily what I'm looking for
04:31 in every dish that has garlic in it,
04:32 but it is what I'm looking for in this.
04:34 So I'm gonna grate in a garlic clove
04:35 and then I'm gonna start whisking.
04:37 First to combine everything that's in the bowl.
04:38 And then I'm gonna slowly be streaming in oil.
04:41 I'm doing like a two-prong technique
04:44 of keeping a very steady stream
04:46 by keeping my hand kind of high.
04:48 And then with my right hand, I'm not whisking in circles.
04:51 I'm almost doing like a figure eight,
04:53 back and forth, back and forth,
04:54 hitting like four corners of the bowl
04:57 or like eight corners of the bowl,
04:58 however you wanna hear it.
04:59 And honestly, like your arm is gonna get tired.
05:03 And as long as your emotion isn't broken,
05:04 you can take a break.
05:06 It's not gonna just break just sitting here.
05:07 As long as the emotion is still happening,
05:09 you can take a break, let your arm air out.
05:11 And then get right back in it to finish it off.
05:14 You're sort of looking for like a ranch dressing
05:17 type texture.
05:17 It shouldn't be as set as like an American mayonnaise.
05:20 So I'm gonna season with a bit of salt,
05:23 mix that on in there.
05:25 And we can set this aside with our Brava sauce.
05:27 And then we can really get to frying.
05:30 There's a myth that olive oil
05:31 has this like exceptionally low smoke point.
05:34 And it is true that it does have a lower smoke point
05:37 than most oils, but that smoke point is like 425 degrees,
05:40 way higher than like anybody would ever want
05:44 to deep fry at.
05:45 So if you've heard like you can never deep fry in olive oil,
05:48 that's incorrect.
05:50 It is expensive.
05:51 Olive oil is far more expensive than other oils.
05:53 And like the reason that the Spanish tend to get away
05:56 with frying an oil, is they reuse that oil a lot.
05:58 When I lived in Spain, my host mother had like a kettle
06:02 of oil that she would like pour right back into
06:04 that had a strainer that was part of it.
06:06 It was a really cool contraption.
06:07 They're using less expensive olive oil also.
06:10 It's not like the stuff that you drizzle
06:11 on olives or bread.
06:13 But we're gonna be using oil to fry today.
06:16 And we wanna bring it to a temperature of 360,
06:18 well below the smoke point.
06:20 It's still gonna be delicious, not acrid.
06:21 And we're gonna fry them up.
06:22 It's gonna take six to eight minutes.
06:24 You can mix it around with a spider or a spat,
06:26 just making sure that all the sides are being covered.
06:29 Once those are done,
06:30 remove them to a paper towel lined plate,
06:32 season them immediately with salt.
06:33 That salt's gonna adhere to the hot oil.
06:36 How you will often see these potatoes
06:38 is with like perfect little squiggles of sauce
06:41 going over your potatoes.
06:42 So I'm gonna transfer both of my sauces to a squeeze bottle
06:45 and I'm gonna get those beautiful lines.
06:47 It's gonna be gorgeous.
06:49 Holding this plate, looking at this brings me back
06:52 to when I was living in Spain.
06:53 I feel like a macero in Barcelona.
06:57 Who's about to drop your tapa onto your plate
07:00 with your drink.
07:01 You're getting your free tapa placed in front of you.
07:04 And now it is time to take your little toothpick
07:06 and dig in.
07:08 You could just have the one sauce
07:09 and then they go the extra bit further to understand that
07:12 you need to balance out that rich, fruity,
07:14 earthy, smoky flavor from the brava sauce.
07:17 You have to add that bright kind of bite of the alioli.
07:21 That balance, that squiggle of sauce of each kind
07:24 on every potato is exactly what you need.
07:27 There is something magical also about like frying food
07:30 in olive oil.
07:31 It feels very decadent.
07:32 I mean, they fry their food in olive oil
07:34 'cause their olive oil is as cheap as vegetable oil for us.
07:36 But when we do it here, it feels a little expensive.
07:39 And because we par-cooked those potatoes,
07:41 they are perfectly fluffy on the inside.
07:43 They have a nice crispity crunch on the outside.
07:45 This is like ultimate party food, ultimate game night food.
07:49 So you want more inspiration for little bites
07:52 just like this, stick around here on delish.com.
07:54 (upbeat music)
07:57 [BLANK_AUDIO]