Christmas Dinner
As we get further and further into December, I can feel the anticipation in the air. I am impatient for Christmas to come, as it is my favorite holiday, but it’s important to savor it. It only happens once a year, after all! I am so excited to spend time with my family catching up, playing games, cooking, and just having a relaxing week or so together. And, of course, I am also excited to eat lots of delicious holiday food! In Denmark, we have Christmas dinner on the 24th, and we usually eat a main dish of pork roast and roast duck, served with different types of potatoes, pickled cabbage, and plenty of gravy.
Today’s Recipe
Today’s recipe is one of the side dishes we serve at Danish Christmas dinner, brunede kartofler. These may sound strange to you at first, but bear with me. They are actually one of our favorite parts of the entire meal! Basically, they are very small potatoes cooked in caramel, and they turn out glossy, slightly sweet, and with an amazing texture. It may sound weird that we serve these alongside meat and savory things, but they provide a great balance. In our house, it is very rare for there to be any leftover brunede kartofler from Christmas dinner, as they are always a huge hit!
How to Make Brunede Kartofler
There are a few slightly tricky things about this recipe. First, peeling the potatoes properly is an annoyingly tedious but very essential part of getting these to turn out right! Make sure to only peel the outer layer of the skin off; in other words, try not to pierce the potato and keep the outside as smooth as possible. If you are making a big batch, this can take a while to do, but you can easily assign it to helping hands in the kitchen if you have them! Next, heat up sugar and water in a saucepan. What is important here is not to stir the caramel and let it caramelize and turn amber on its own. Also, be careful that it doesn’t get too dark – burnt caramel is awfully bitter and not what you want! If you do give this recipe a try, let us know in the comments how it goes. We absolutely love these potatoes and hope that you do too!
Brunede Kartofler (Danish Caramelized Potatoes)
Ingredients
- 1.3 kilograms (3 lbs) small yellow potatoes
- 100 grams (1/2 cup) granulated sugar
- 57 grams (4 tbsp) butter (salted or unsalted is fine)
- 60 ml (1/4 cup) water
- Splash of heavy cream (optional but if your caramel starts to look split, it can help save it!)
Instructions
- Boil potatoes by placing washed potatoes with the skin on in cold water, then placing on the stove over medium/high heat until it begins boiling. You can make a little cross hatch on each potato if you like to make it easier to peel after boiling!
- When the potatoes have come to a boil, boil for 10-15 minutes until tender – you should be able to pierce a potato with a knife easily with little resistance. Drain the potatoes.
- Now comes the most tedious part of this recipe – peeling the potatoes! Let them cool until you can handle them, then carefully peel off the outer layer of the skin using a paring knife, or even a butter knife.
- This will take a long time, try to be patient! The goal is to keep the potatoes as intact as possible.
- Place the peeled potatoes in a container and put in the fridge until cooled.
- When the potatoes have cooled down, place a skillet or large bottomed pot on the stove. Add sugar and water (traditionally you would not add water to the sugar, but we find the inconsistency of our stove means it's very difficult to start with just sugar as it browns unevenly!)
- Heat the mixture over medium heat (you can turn it down too if it gets too hot!) without stirring. If crystals form along the edge of the pan, you can use a brush and some water to dissolve them. If there's any uneven patches, you can gently swirl your pot or pan to help it dissolve.
- When the mixture starts to turn an amber color and the sugar has fully dissolved, add butter. It may foam up, so be careful! At this stage, you can whisk it together.
- If the mixture looks split and greasy, add a splash of heavy cream – this should bring it back together!
- Before adding the potatoes to the caramel, dry them off with a paper towel to get any excess moisture or condensation off of them.
- Add the potatoes and stir to combine. The caramel may get a little runnier when you add the potatoes – this is normal!
- Now you can caramelize the potatoes as much as you like – we tend to just heat our potatoes through and they have a thin coating of the caramel, with extra caramel to drizzle on top – but you can continue cooking to get a darker color on the potatoes! This is up to personal preference!
- Serve the potatoes immediately – best enjoyed with roasted meat and braised cabbage!
