We already showed you some holiday veggie dishes we cooked up recently, so here’s more of the delicious food we made this year at Christmas:  our two potato dishes.  Everyone knows you can’t have a holiday meal without potatoes, and this year we cooked up not one but two different varieties.  We decided to try out some salt potatoes, like we had on our trip to Syracuse, as well as a new version of sweet potatoes.  They both turned out pretty awesome, and as a bonus they’re also completely vegan.  We’ll show you how to make both of these potatoes because we think you’ll like them too.

For the salt potatoes, based on this recipe from Bon Appétit, you’ll need:

• A box of kosher salt
• 3-4 pounds of fingerling potatoes
• Rosemary
• Garlic
• Olive oil

For the sweet potatoes, from a recipe in the New York Times, you’ll need:

• 3 sweet potatoes
• An onion
• Garlic
• Olive oil
• Smoked paprika

Let’s start with the salt potatoes:  pour about 2 1/2 cups of salt (which is going to be most of the box) into the bottom of a large casserole pan and spread it around evenly.  Wash off all your potatoes, prick them with a fork, and arrange them embedded in the salt.  Bake the potatoes for 40-45 minutes at 425°F, until they’re tender inside.

When your potatoes are almost done, strip the leaves from two sprigs of rosemary and add them to a small saucepan with 3 sliced garlic cloves and 1/4 cup of olive oil.  Cook everything over medium-low heat until the garlic begins to turn golden.

When the potatoes are done and have cooled off a little, roll each one around in the extra salt before transferring them to a serving dish.  Pour the olive oil mixture over everything and stir it to evenly coat all the potatoes, and then they’re done!

Next, here’s how we made the sweet potatoes:  we peeled and diced them up and did the same thing with our onion.

Then we spread the potatoes and onion into a large casserole dish and stirred 3 tablespoons of olive oil in to evenly coat everything.

Next we sprinkled in salt, a generous amount of pepper, and a tablespoon of smoked paprika and mixed these in well.

We covered the casserole dish with foil and baked it at 425°F for 35 minutes, until the potatoes had begun to crisp around the edges.  Then we served them:

Both of these types of potatoes are pretty simple to make, and they’re really tasty!  The salt potatoes are –  duh – nice and salty, with the olive oil, garlic, and rosemary adding contrasting, rich flavors to balance out the salt.  The sweet potatoes taste really unique with all that smokes paprika, and they come out of the oven really tender and colorful.  When you’re cooking up an entire holiday meal it can get pretty crazy in the kitchen, so luckily these are two potato dishes that you can whip up easily without sacrificing any flavor.  You can try them at Christmas or any other time of the year!