Aunt Bessie’s Roast Potatoes – Or The Roasts That Ruined Christmas (circa 2003).
Come on, admit it, we’ve all tried a few time-savers in the kitchen from time to time and I must confess that I have used frozen roasties occasionally. I may also have eaten Yorkshire puddings from Aunt Bessie’s and found them to be almost palatable. So when I found out I was to cook a Christmas dinner for the lads I decided to give these little beauties a try.
When cooking at Christmas in my old kitchen it must be noted that I could stand in the middle of it and almost touch all the walls at the same time. The benefits were that I had a very large oven and a pantry, but no real working space apart from the draining board of the sink. The benefits of being able to just pop these roasts into the oven without par boiling first would outweigh the drop in quality over making them from scratch. The lads would be on the beer anyway and there were loads of other veggies along with turkey, stuffing and all the other trimmings.
I placed them into a roasting tin along with a little vegetable oil and popped them into a hot oven as per the instructions. I thought to myself that they all looked suspiciously similar in size and shape but Aunt Bessie must have a team of dedicated spud sculptors back at her farmhouse taking care of that sort of thing. When they were cooked they were taken out of the oven and had a pleasing golden brown and crispy crust around them. I was happy with my resource saving cheat and shouted to the lads that my cheaty roasts looked good.
The rest of the meal was also ready and was taken to the table. Dave the butcher offered to carve the bird and the plates were piled up to resemble a feast of Dickensian proportions. The guests who were already asleep were woken (it was nearly 2pm after all). Drinks were poured, and merriments of the season were wished to one an all. Silly hats from crackers were worn and the novelty items put to unusual and disturbing uses that the designers had never thought of.
I cut into an Aunt Bessie’s Roast Potatoes which gave way with a pleasant crunch and bit into it. There was something wrong, something very wrong indeed. My mouth was expecting soft fluffy potato after the pleasing crispy outer but instead my tongue was swimming in a puddle of greasy mash. I don’t care what anyone says, these were not real spuds but were reconstituted rubbish. I asked for other opinions of the roasties and they went from “awful” to “utter shit”. None were eaten. Christmas was ruined and Tiny Tim had his crutch used as a Yule log. Thanks Aunt Bessie you old whore.
For the lawyers: Aunt Bessie’s products have been improved several times in the intervening years and I am sure the current roast potatoes they sell are as good as their Yorkshires and bear no resemblance to the the monstrosities of the early 2000s.
It said on the packet reconstituted potatoes !!! why would anyone turn a roast potatoe into something else then back into a roast potatoe??? Utter MADNESS!!!!