About two months ago, I had potato wedges at brunch. It was my birthday. And I was having the bougie-est birthday ever. I went to the Newport Jazz Festival, spent the day on a boat, and then went to brunch, where I had the world's best plate of potato wedges.
Full disclosure: this was not a birthday I planned for myself. I'm not a jazz person, a boat person, or a brunch person. But I am a potato wedges person. The perfect ones are a bit too salty, crispy on the outside with a mashed potatoey inside. Kinda like steak fries. But the steak fries you can have at breakfast on your birthday.
Smash cut to the Castle Hill Inn, a place that can lay claim to statements like "has panoramic ocean views" and "home to a beach named after Grace Kelly." I was sitting there in the hot morning sun, looking at the world's largest collection of Adirondack chairs, watching boats cruise up and down the river. And I was snacking on steaming-hot wedges—definitely the best part of the whole experience. These wedges were incredibly crisp, tender, and covered in "flavor gravel," a secret coating of spices and crunch that gave them the air of mystery.
What were these magical potato creatures? After eating all my wedges and picking at everyone else's, I did what any reasonable employee of a food website would do: I called the chef and got that secret wedge recipe, so I could share it with the entire Internet.
So, why am I writing you two months later? Why didn't we unleash these miracle wedges on the world immediately? Because even when you've got a recipe, making great wedges is hard, man. That wedge game ain't easy. Some batches were limp. Some were burned. And others, they just never got that spice blend right. Luckily, the Epicurious Test Kitchen cracked the code.
Here's what we learned on the road to wedge heaven.
Great fried chicken gets a stint in buttermilk (which keeps it tender) and a dredge through seasoned flour (which makes it crispy) before it gets fried. Despite the fact that it goes against standard potato-frying practices (see the next item), these wedges follow suit.
Most great fried potatoes achieve said greatness through the double-fry method. The first fry cooks the potatoes until tender; the second fry makes them crisp. Castle Hill shuns this method in favor of par-boiling the potatoes and then frying them. The result: Soft, pillowy potatoes with a crunchy, golden exterior—and only one splattery session in hot oil.
Whole mustard seeds get stirred into the coating for these wedges, and they crunch and pop when you bite into them—that's part of the wedge's impeccable texture. The only problem? No real mustard flavor. So we made a small tweak by crushing half the mustard seeds to release the flavorful mustard oils. The other half remained whole to provide that crunch.
The first couple times we made these wedges, we pre-seasoned them with salt, garlic powder, paprika, and black pepper. And they were...good. But it wasn't until we took the hot-from-the-fryer potatoes and gave them a finishing sprinkle of those same spices that the wedges went from good to intergalactic. The takeaway: Potato wedges are like those boats—the more bells and whistles, the better.
