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    Potatoes · Recipe · Madrid · Reference page

    Patatas bravas

    Bite-sized pieces of fried potato half-covered with a hot pimentón sauce. This version, from Directo al Paladar, makes the sauce as a velouté of onion, sweet and hot pimentón, flour and stock, with no tomato. Madrid's bars are credited with the tapa.

    Patatas bravas with golden fried potato pieces, orange-red paprika sauce and parsley on a white plate.
    Editorial illustration of the documented recipe; not a photograph of a kitchen-tested result.
    Servings
    4
    Preparation
    10 min
    Cooking
    20 min
    Total
    30 min
    Difficulty
    Easy

    Equipment

    • Wide frying pan for the sauce
    • Deep pan or fryer for the potatoes
    • Stick blender and fine sieve
    Servings4

    Ingredients

    • The sauce

    • The potatoes

    Shopping list

    Method

    1. Soften the onion in 4 tbsp olive oil in a wide pan over a very low heat. Before it colours, stir in the sweet and hot pimentón.

      Why Pimentón burns in seconds in hot oil and turns bitter; add it to gently cooking onion.

    2. Add the flour and cook 1–2 minutes until it forms a roux with the oil, then add the stock little by little, stirring, as for a velouté.

    3. Cook for 10 minutes so the flour and pimentón lose their raw taste. Blend and pass through a fine sieve.

      Timer · 10 min10:00

    4. Cut the potatoes into irregular pieces small enough for one bite. Fry them in olive oil over a medium heat until they begin to turn golden. Drain on kitchen paper and salt them.

      Timer · 10 min10:00

    5. Spoon about 3 tbsp of the sauce over the potatoes, leaving some uncovered, scatter with parsley and serve very hot, with more sauce on the side.

    To drink & serve with

    Substitutions

    • Flour-based sauce → A tomato-based brava: onion, garlic, cayenne, hot pimentón, crushed tomato and stock reduced slowly, with a little sherry vinegar (Directo al Paladar's other version).
    • Wheat flour (gluten-free) → Use the tomato version, which needs no flour.

    Common mistakes

    • Burning the pimentón: the sauce turns bitter.
    • Drowning the potatoes in sauce: they lose their crust. Cover them only partly.
    • Mixing with alioli: purists keep the two apart, though some bars serve both.

    Storage & reheating

    Fry the potatoes just before serving. The sauce keeps about a week in the fridge in a closed container.

    Safety

    Contains gluten (flour). Many chicken stocks contain celery; check the label. Hot oil: never leave it unattended.

    Allergens

    Gluten

    Check labels: stock, bacon and sauces can contain further allergens.

    Dietary

    dairy-free

    Madrid in the 1950s

    Directo al Paladar puts the origin of patatas bravas, with some uncertainty, in Madrid in the 1950s and 1960s. Two bars that no longer exist, Casa Pellico on calle Toledo and La Casona on calle Echegaray, are recognised as the first to serve the tapa, and from Madrid it spread through the country. The same writers admit there is no reference to an exact original recipe: no two bars make the sauce the same way.

    [1]

    Velouté or tomato

    There are two families of salsa brava. The one given here, which Directo al Paladar calls the authentic sauce, is a velouté: onion and pimentón cooked in oil, bound with flour and loosened with chicken stock, then blended and sieved. Tomato-based sauces, which may have appeared first in Madrid too, replace the flour and stock with crushed tomato reduced slowly. Either way the heat comes from hot pimentón or cayenne.

    [2][1]

    How it connects

    Place

    • origin Madrid In preparation

    Potato

    Wine region

    Recipe

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