A roasting pan filled with British Roast Potatoes Photo: Courtesy of Edward Swales

Of all the rituals performed during the festive season, for many Christmas dinner is the most intimidating.

As a meal it shares many of its elements with the traditional Sunday roast - basically consisting of a meat portion (such as beef, chicken or turkey), some vegetables and a sauce (typically gravy).

Yet it still causes its fair share of fluster and fall outs. Large quantities of food, to be rendered at least edible and piping hot for a specific time is a recipe for culinary headache.

Expounding a step by step guide for the whole process has filled entire books, so here I will attempt to impart what I have learned on just one aspect of it - the roast potato.

Done right, roast potatoes steal the show. Shimmering and golden, they can easily serve as the centerpiece of any Christmas dinner.

Get them wrong and they can end up too hard or even chewy. Common pitfalls include incorrectly pre-roasting, using too little cooking fat and not roasting at the right temperature.

However, thorough preparation and a bit of attention to the cooking process can result in the perfect balance - a potato which is satisfyingly crisp on the outside with a soft and flavorful interior.

Ingredients (Serves 4-5)

5-6 medium sized floury potatoes

Olive oil

Salt

Pepper

Preparation

The first step is choosing the right kind of potato - for roasting, you need a floury potato, not a waxy one. The best variety is King Edward's, but failing this Maris Piper is a good choice.

Once peeled, half/quarter the potatoes into uniform sizes - just a little bigger than a squash ball. Between four and six roast potatoes for each person is ideal.

The next step is to parboil in salted water. Most people don't use enough salt at this point. Before the water gets too hot, sample it - it should taste like the sea. This is the first step in seasoning your potatoes.

Parboiling involves boiling your potatoes in plenty of water (a large saucepan, almost full) for around ten to fifteen minutes. This will ensure a soft consistency on the inside.

They are parboiled when the surface of each potato starts to look slightly rough or even broken. A good test is to stab one with a knife and lift it out slowly - it should fall back into the water.

Next, drain the water and return the potatoes to the pan. Season with salt and pepper and shake the pan with the lid on. Season again and repeat. This process further breaks the surface of the potato, ultimately creating a very crisp exterior.

At this point many leave the potatoes for hours to dry out. Some even place them in the fridge once they've cooled down. Again, this helps create an optimally crisp roast potato.

The roast

Choice of cooking fat comes down to personal preference. The gold standard is often said to be goose fat. Alternatives include butter and, most commonly, olive oil.

You will need to fully coat the surface of a large, deep roasting tray with at least 2 mm of oil and place this in the oven at 200 C for 10 to 15 minutes.

As a note on safety, be very careful from this point onwards as you are dealing with a large quantity of extremely hot cooking fat.

Remove the tray and place each potato carefully into the oil - it should sizzle. Ideally the potatoes should not touch each other, so take care not to overcrowd the cooking surface.

Tip the tray slightly so that the oil accumulates in one corner and baste each potato.

Place the tray back in the oven (still at 200 degrees) for 20 minutes then remove, turn the potatoes and baste again. Repeat this process twice more every 10 minutes.

Once the potatoes are golden brown and crispy all over, they're done!

Variations and pitfalls

Once you've mastered the basic recipe, you can add to it as you please with many different herbs and spices.

A popular variation is to add aromatics such as rosemary, thyme and crushed garlic cloves after the first 20 minutes. I have even known people to lightly coat each potato with Marmite before cooking.

British chef Jamie Oliver recommends using the bottom of a drinking glass to press down on each potato part way through cooking, expanding the surface area exposed to the hot oil for an even crispier finish.

Pre-roasting the potatoes and keeping them warm in a low-heat oven may seem like a good idea but it actually destroys the crisp exterior we worked so hard to achieve. For this reason they are best plated immediately.

One way around this is to roast the potatoes until they're about 15 minutes away from finishing, remove, and then return them to the hot oven for the final 15 minutes before dinner.