Potatoes are my heart, so it had to happen,” says Poppy O’Toole, the 31-year-old chef and TikTok superstar once referred to by Nigella Lawson as the “high priestess of the potato”. O’Toole has every reason to be sincere about the humble spud. In November 2020, when she was an out-of-work chef, she made a TikTok video of her “crispy crunchy parmesan roasties”, which quickly got a million views. Since then, she has built up 4.4 million followers on TikTok, 1.1 million on Instagram, and is a regular on TV, whipping up potato dishes on Saturday Kitchen and This Morning. It is only a wonder that it has taken her so long to get around to writing an entire potato-themed cookbook. Next month’s The Potato Book is the fourth in her Poppy Cooks series. “Good things come to those who wait,” she says.

I meet O’Toole for coffee in a cafe in the centre of Birmingham. “You’ll have to excuse me, I’ve got green fingers,” she says. Last night she went to a party dressed as Shrek. She grew up in the West Midlands, lives nearby, and a lot of her training was done here, first under Glynn Purnell at the recently closed Purnell’s, and then under Alex Claridge at the Wilderness. We drool over one of the city’s very best potato dishes, the aloo tuk at Opheem. “Aktar Islam knows how to respect a vegetable,” she says, admiringly. When she was writing The Potato Book, she realised that in all of her previous jobs, she’d been asked to look after the spuds. “They’d be like, ‘Oh yeah, Poppy, do dauphinoise’, or ‘Poppy, do the fondant potatoes’. Maybe I was always meant to be the potato queen.”

People are often surprised she is a trained chef, in part because a lot of the food she makes is so homely. (Her own version of a fast food chain’s hash browns was another hit.) “When I go on This Morning, and I’m trying to do a roast potato, there will be comments like, ‘How dare this woman tell me how to make a roast potato? I’ve been making roast potatoes for 50 years!’” She understands that people have an emotional attachment to such dishes. “I’m just trying to show you a different way of doing it, and I have had 10 years’ experience working in professional kitchens. Would you say that to Gino D’Acampo?” she says, laughing. Still, it’s better than the time she meant to say “on a whim” on Saturday Kitchen, but accidentally said “on a quim”, forcing host Matt Tebbutt to apologise, while she looked perplexed in the background. “It was so bad,” she says. “As a guest, you don’t get an earpiece, so you can’t hear someone going, you’ve just said the C-word in Olde English on the telly.” Happily, she seems to be fairly thick-skinned. “I don’t mind if people come for me,” she says. “It’s when people come for the food itself. I get like, no, I swear, it’s really good, I promise you.”

Social media may have launched O’Toole into TV, but it came into her life out of necessity. Just before the pandemic hit, she was working at the AllBright, a women’s members club in Mayfair, which offered more sociable hours than restaurant work. “I was like, I want to see my partner, I want to see the dogs.” When Covid shut everything down, she and her now fiance, Tom, moved in with O’Toole’s mum in Bromsgrove, where she applied, and was rejected, for shelf-stacking and delivery jobs. While she was at home, her younger siblings showed her TikTok. She knew it for the dancing, but didn’t realise there was more to it than that. Then she saw someone cooking on there. The timing was perfect. “I felt pretty lost. I’d only ever cooked and worked in kitchens. I didn’t really know how to help anybody,” she explains. She decided to try her hand on the platform, and filmed herself making churros. “I was trying to make things look a bit brighter for somebody, somewhere – maybe just myself, really – and then people started watching.”

After many, many more millions of views and followers, O’Toole remains dedicated to the potato. “I just think that, overall, they’re an easy tuber to get on with,” she says. She is particularly fond of a maris piper, or a pink fir for special occasions. In her book and on her channels, she does mashed, roasted, baked, fried, all with a wide variety of toppings and techniques.

Are there any potato recipes that she doesn’t like? “I can see the glory in all of them,” she says, tactfully. “But I suppose my least exciting dish is just boiled.” It’s a waste of potential? She nods. “You’re dulling the sparkle.”

Salt ’n’ pepper chips (pictured top)

A British thing that has gone viral internationally over the past few years is our love of a Chinese takeaway. Salt and pepper chips are a staple of these – and are basically your favourite fried potatoes mixed with delicious peppers and Chinese seasoning to make a must-have every time you order. They’re super-easy to make at home, too. A nice dip to go with this is a lime and coriander number. In a bowl, mix together sour cream, mayonnaise, chopped coriander, lime juice, lime zest, grated garlic, and salt and pepper to your taste, then chill in the fridge for 30 minutes or so to help all the flavours combine. Serve with your chips.

Serves 2
maris piper potatoes 800g, long and thick, peeled
neutral oil
green pepper ½, deseeded and cubed
red chilli 1, sliced (deseed for less heat)
garlic 2 cloves, sliced
Chinese five spice powder 1 tsp
golden syrup 1 tbsp
salt
chilli flakes to serve (optional)

Slice your potatoes into the perfect chip shape (the thickness of your index finger is a good measure). Get the chips into a saucepan of heavily salted, cold water. Place the pan over a high heat, bring the water to the boil and cook for 7 minutes, until they fall off the tip of a knife. Gently scoop the potatoes out of the water with a slotted spoon so they don’t break up. One by one, spread the chips out over a rack placed over a tray (be careful so as not to break them up). Cover with a tea towel and leave to steam-dry for 5-10 minutes.

Pour your oil into a deep-fat fryer or a heavy-based saucepan (don’t let it come more than halfway up the inside of the pan). Place the pan over a high heat and get the oil to 140C on a cooking thermometer (or use the fryer thermometer). In batches, fry the chips for 5-8 minutes, until they have a solid outside – no colour, just hard. Remove each batch from the pan carefully and set them aside to drain on kitchen paper. Once all the chips are draining, increase the temperature of the oil to 180C. In batches again, fry the chips for about 3-5 minutes, until golden, draining each batch on kitchen paper to soak up any excess oil.

In a separate saucepan, heat 1 tablespoon of oil over a medium-high heat. Add the pepper, chilli and garlic and fry for 2-3 minutes, to soften, then add the Chinese five spice and golden syrup. The room should be filled with that beautiful salt ’n’ pepper aroma. Chuck the chips into the pan with the pepper mixture and toss together. Season well with salt, sprinkle with chilli flakes, if you like, then serve up.

Hot honey and bacon mash

Hot honey and bacon needs to be on everything. It’s sweet, spicy, cheesy, creamy and every other positive adjective you can think of… A bit of spice in your mash never hurt anybody and the twist brings the perfect balance for your spud.

Serves 2
maris piper potatoes 600g, peeled and sliced into 2cm rounds
double cream 75ml
garlic 1 clove, minced
rosemary 1 sprig
butter 50g, cubed
mature cheddar 50g, finely grated, plus extra for the topping
dijon mustard 1 heaped tsp, plus ½ tbsp for the topping
runny honey 2 tbsp
red chilli 1, sliced
thyme 1 sprig, leaves picked
smoked streaky bacon 4 rashers

Pop the potato slices into a saucepan of heavily salted, cold water and bring to the boil. Reduce the heat and leave on a gentle boil for around 20 minutes until the slices fall off the tip of a knife. Drain in a colander. Put the colander back on the empty pan on the turned-off hob ring, cover the potatoes with a clean tea towel and leave them to steam-dry for 5 minutes.

Warm the cream, garlic and rosemary together in a small saucepan over a medium heat until thickened and hot. Season well with salt and pepper. While still hot, pass the steam-dried potatoes with pieces of the butter through a sieve or potato ricer into a bowl, or mash them together with a potato masher.

Remove the rosemary sprig from the warm, infused cream and, using a rubber spatula, fold the cream into the mash. Throw in the cheddar and heaped teaspoon of dijon and mix together. In a small saucepan, mix the honey, chilli, thyme leaves and the ½ tablespoon of dijon. Warm gently for 5 minutes to infuse the honey, then remove from the heat.

Heat the oven to 180C fan/gas mark 6. In a frying pan over a medium heat, fry the bacon for 8 minutes, until crispy, then chop it up. Stir three-quarters of the chopped bacon through the mash, then save the rest for sprinkling. Spread out the mash in a baking dish. Pour over the honey mixture, then sprinkle over the reserved bacon and some extra cheddar. Pop in the oven for 10-15 minutes, until the cheese is gratinated and bubbling.

Rosti

Serves 6-8
maris piper potatoes 1.2-1.9kg, peeled and grated
onion 1 large, grated
chilli flakes 1 heaped tsp
clarified butter 2 tbsp, or ghee, melted
salt and black pepper

To serve
creme fraiche 4 tsp
caviar 1 tbsp
flaky salt
chopped chives and picked dill to garnish

Put the grated potato and onion in a clean tea towel and squeeze out all of the liquid. Put the dried potato and onion into a mixing bowl with the chilli flakes and melted clarified butter or ghee. Stir to combine, then season well with salt and pepper.

Place a non-stick medium frying pan (about 23cm diameter) over a medium heat. Once it’s hot, fully fill the pan with a thick layer of the potato mixture. Don’t press the potato too much into the pan, you still need there to be little air pockets so that the steam can cook the rosti all the way through (if it’s too compressed it won’t cook in the centre). Leave to cook for 15-20 minutes, not turning up the heat too high – think low and slow. You can tell when the edges start to go translucent and slightly brown that the rosti is ready to flip. To do this, I recommend placing a chopping board or large plate on top of the frying pan, inverting it so that the rosti lands on the board or plate, then carefully sliding the rosti back into the frying pan, uncooked side down, to continue. Cook for another 10 minutes, until golden and crisp on the underside and cooked all the way through.

Transfer the rosti to a chopping board and slice it into wedges. Put a blob of creme fraiche on each wedge, top with a few pieces of caviar and sprinkle over some flaky salt, chives and dill to finish.

Star-crossed garlic baked potato

I took inspiration from Korean garlic bread for this, so you have cream cheese and garlic stuffed into your jacket potato. It’s a beauty.

Serves 2
baking potatoes 2
neutral oil
garlic 1 bulb
caster sugar a pinch
full-fat cream cheese 80g
butter 100g
flat-leaf parsley a small handful, leaves chopped
salt and black pepper

Heat your oven to 200C fan/gas mark 7. Rub your potatoes with oil and a good amount of salt, pierce with a fork and then wrap the garlic bulb and the potatoes individually in tin foil. Bake for 45 minutes, until the spuds and garlic are cooked, then remove the foil and the garlic. Return the potatoes to the oven for another 5-15 minutes, until the skins are crispy and the flesh is tender.

Meanwhile, make the filling. In a mixing bowl, mix together the sugar and cream cheese, and season with salt and pepper. In a separate bowl, warm your butter in a microwave until just softened and stir through your chopped parsley. Squeeze out the garlic from the skins; it should be soft enough to smush with a fork, then add that to the butter, too.

Remove the potatoes from the oven and cut six deep slits in the top in the shape of a star (take care not to cut all the whole way through). Fill your slits with the cream cheese mixture, then douse the top in the garlic-parsley butter and sprinkle over some more salt. Turn up your oven to 210C fan/gas mark 8 and throw those tatties back in for 15-20 minutes, until they are extra-crispy.

TIP These potatoes are perfect for the air fryer. Cook for 45 minutes on 200C, then add the fillings and pop them back in to give them a final 10 minutes at the end.

Tomato and vodka potato bake

Vodka pasta went viral – it blew everyone’s mind that a splash of the hard stuff in your pasta sauce could result in something glorious. So I thought I would swap out the pasta for some spuds.

Serves 4-6
olive oil
shallots 2, sliced
garlic 2 cloves, finely chopped or grated
chilli flakes 1 tsp
tomato puree 2 tbsp
vodka 3 tbsp
plum tomatoes 1 x 400g tin
double cream 150ml
maris piper potatoes 900g, peeled
chicken stock or water a splash
cherry tomatoes 5-6, halved
grated mozzarella 100g
salt and black pepper
basil and rosemary leaves a few, to garnish

Heat your oven to 160C fan/gas mark 4. Heat a large frying pan over a medium heat. Add a splash of oil and the shallots and fry for 5-7 minutes, until light golden brown. Add the garlic and chilli flakes and cook for another 2-3 minutes, until softened and fragrant.

Stir in the tomato puree and deglaze the pan with the vodka. Tip in the plum tomatoes and use a fork to smush them up. Add the cream, then leave the liquid to reduce for a few minutes while you slice your potatoes 2-3mm thick. Place the slices in a bowl of water while you finish making the sauce.

Blitz your reduced sauce with a hand blender until thick and smooth, then taste for seasoning, adjusting with salt and pepper as necessary. Add the splash of stock or water if the sauce is very thick.

Begin layering your potato slices into a rectangular baking dish (about 30cm x 20cm), pouring over your sauce between each layer. Top with baking parchment and bake for 1½ hours, until the potatoes are cooked through.

Turn up the heat on the oven to 180C fan/gas mark 6 and take out the dish of potatoes. Discard the baking parchment from the top, then dot over the halved tomatoes (cut-side up) and sprinkle over the grated mozzarella. Finish with a garnish of basil and rosemary leaves and then pop the dish back into the oven for 10-15 minutes, until the top is golden brown and bubbling.

Hash brown bhajis

What could possibly make an onion bhaji better? Potato. Always potato. Serve these up as part of a spiced breakfast with a poached egg, coconut yoghurt and some mango chutney, or as a chunky starter.

Serves 4
maris piper potatoes 800g, peeled and coarsely grated
onion 1, peeled and coarsely grated
mild curry powder 1 tsp
cornflour 1 tbsp
chilli flakes ½ tsp
nigella seeds ½ tsp, plus optional extra to serve
flaky salt 1 tsp
neutral oil
black pepper

To serve
coconut yoghurt 2 tbsp
mango chutney
coriander leaves a handful, roughly chopped or torn
red chilli 1, finely chopped

Line a baking tray with baking parchment. Tip the grated potato and onion into a clean tea towel. Gather up the edges and squeeze out all of the moisture.

Tip the squeezed potato and onion into a mixing bowl and add the curry powder, cornflour, chilli flakes, nigella seeds and flaky salt, and season with pepper. Mix well to evenly combine, then form the mixture into 8 equal patties. Place each patty on the lined baking tray and transfer them to the fridge for 1 hour to firm up. Heat the oven to 180C fan/gas mark 6.

Meanwhile, heat a large frying pan over medium heat with a large drizzle of oil. In batches of 2 at a time, add the hash browns to the hot oil, frying for 2-4 minutes on each side, until golden-brown all over (this is just to get some colour on them). Set aside each batch in another baking tray while you fry the remainder, topping up the oil and bringing it to temperature as necessary.

Transfer the part-cooked hash browns to the oven and bake them for 15-20 minutes, until cooked through.

When the hash browns are cooked, spread a few dollops of coconut yoghurt on a serving plate, add the spoonfuls of mango chutney, then the top with the bhajis and sprinkle with the chopped coriander and chilli. A sprinkling of extra nigella seeds are good over the top, too, if you fancy. Alternatively, just serve the yoghurt and chutney in separate bowls for people to dig in themselves, sharing-style.

Recipes from Poppy Cooks: The Potato Book by Poppy O’Toole (Bloomsbury, £22), published 27 February. To preorder a copy for £19.80, go to guardianbookshop.com