Cheesy Delia Smith potato wedges are small jacket potatoes baked whole, cut into quarters and grilled with mature Cheddar and spring onions. You bake them for an hour at 180°C, then flash them under the grill, so they take about 1 hour 20 minutes. The recipe serves 4.
They come from Happy Christmas (2009), page 184, where she calls them a great way to serve potatoes in winter. Her Christmas Eve supper in that book puts them beside roast gammon with blackened crackling and her homemade Cumberland sauce. Braised red cabbage with apples then completes that plate.
Unlike her jacket potatoes with crunchy skins, split and served with butter, these are quartered and finished with cheese.
Delia Smith Jacket Potato Wedges
Small potatoes baked whole in olive oil and salt flakes, cut into quarters, then grilled with spring onions and mature Cheddar until bubbling.
4
servings10
minutes1
hour10
minutes220
kcalIngredients
- For the wedges:
700g small potatoes, washed
50g mature Cheddar, grated
4 spring onions, chopped small, green parts included
Directions
- Heat: Heat the oven to 180°C, gas mark 4.
- Oil: Rub each potato with olive oil and sprinkle generously with salt flakes. Put them in a medium-sized solid, shallow roasting tin.
- Bake: Bake the potatoes on a high shelf for an hour.
- Grill: Preheat the grill for 10 minutes. Cut each potato into quarters and lay them in a grill pan lined with foil.
- Top: Scatter the spring onions over the potatoes, then sprinkle on the cheese.
- Finish: Grill until the cheese has browned and is bubbling.
FAQs
What size of potato works best?
Small potatoes work best here, 700g of them for 4 people, washed but not peeled. Left whole, they sit happily in the oven, as the book puts it, before you cut them into quarters. No peeling is part of the appeal, and her plain chunky chips keep the peel on too.
Why rub them with oil and salt?
Crushed salt draws moisture out of the skin and, with the oil, gives extra crunch, as her 1998 jacket potato recipe explains. Use salt flakes here, sprinkled on generously.
Should I prick the potatoes first?
No, the wedges recipe does not ask for it. Her larger jacket potatoes are pricked a few times with a fork to stop them splitting, as the Complete Cookery Course (1992) explains. Her salt-crusted mini baked potatoes for parties, in the same Christmas book, are pricked with a fork too.
Can I use large baking potatoes?
Yes, but large potatoes need longer in the oven before you cut them. Her large jacket potatoes get 1¾ to 2 hours in a 190°C oven in How to Cook Book One (1998).
Her 1992 Complete Cookery Course adds that a lower heat and longer baking give a tougher, crunchier skin. It tests them with a skewer pushed into the thickest part.
How do I get the cheese bubbling?
Give the grill 10 minutes to heat up once the potatoes come out, and quarter them into a foil-lined grill pan. Spread the spring onions over first, then the 50g of grated mature Cheddar. Leave them under the heat until the cheese browns and bubbles.
How do I make plain potato wedges?
Plain wedges are her oven-roasted chunky chips, from the Vegetarian Collection (2002), page 189, for 4 to 6 people, and her website gives them too. Leave the peel on 900g of Désirée potatoes, halve them lengthways and cut each half into chunky wedges about 2.5cm thick.
Toss them with one dessertspoon of olive oil and a sprinkling of salt. Spread them on a solid 40 x 28cm baking tray and roast them high in a 230°C oven for about 30 minutes. So little oil keeps them low in fat, she points out.
How do I get plain wedges really crisp?
Dry the potatoes very thoroughly in a clean tea towel, as they need to be as dry as possible, then dry the cut wedges again. Ready-washed potatoes only need wiping with kitchen paper.
If they are not golden brown and crisp after 30 minutes, give them a few more minutes. Then add a little more salt and serve them at once.
Her red onion, tomato and chilli relish was devised especially for these chips, she says in the 1998 book, on page 188. It blends 225g of tomatoes with a small red onion, half a chilli and garlic. The mixture simmers very gently with balsamic vinegar and brown sugar for 2 hours, then keeps for several days in the fridge.
