Seriouseats calls these Hasselback Potato Gratin and they are a great potato dish, although they do take some time to make - not ideal for a weeknight meal.
Ingredients
- 85g (3 ounces) finely grated Gruyère or Comté cheese (I used cheddar)
- 60g (2 ounces) finely grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese
- 2 cups (480ml) heavy cream
- 2 medium cloves garlic, minced
- 1 tablespoon fresh thyme or rosemary or other herb leaves, chopped
- Salt and pepper
- 3 to 3.5 lbs russet potatoes, peeled and sliced to 1/8”
Nutrition
- Total Calories: 4237
- Weight: 2673g
Directions
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Preheat oven to 400°F. Combine cheeses in a large bowl. Transfer 1/3 of cheese mixture to a separate bowl and set aside. Add cream, garlic, and fresh herbs to cheese mixture. Season generously with salt and pepper.
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Add potato slices and toss with hands until every slice is coated with cream mixture, making sure to separate any slices that are sticking together to get the cream mixture in between them.
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Grease a 2-quart casserole dish and add potatoes in neat stacks with their edges aligned vertically. Continue placing potatoes in casserole until all potatoes have been added. Potatoes will be very tightly packed. Pour excess cream/cheese mixture evenly over potatoes.
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Cover tightly with lid/foil and transfer to oven. Bake for 30 minutes. Remove lid/foil and continue baking until top is pale golden brown, about 30 minutes longer. Carefully remove from oven, sprinkle with remaining cheese, and return to oven. Bake until deep golden brown and crisp on top, about 30 minutes longer. Remove from oven, let rest for a few minutes, and serve.
Notes
- Takes 1.5hrs to cook, total time about 2-2.5hrs so plan accordingly.
- Cream mixture will likely spill over sides, place pan below to catch drippings.
Step by Step
I sometimes have trouble getting recipe timing correct, and especially with this dish. The first time I made it I only skimmed the recipe and saw the first 30min cooking time, not the additional 60mins cooking time. Another time I didn’t peel and slice the potatoes early enough for them to be done cooking when everything else was ready. Waiting on one food to finish while everything else is ready can be a real bummer, so there’s a couple things I do to mitigate timing issues. First is to read the whole recipe, really read it. Make sure you know the total cooking time, add prep time to your plan, and make sure you have all your ingredients on hand.
Next, I like to get all my ingredients out and ready. That way when you are done with one recipe step and ready to move on to the next everything is all set. For example if the recipe calls for frying something for 3 mins then adding a different chopped ingredient, having that chopped ingredient ready to go makes cooking so much easier than quickly trying to find it in the fridge and chop it while the ingredients frying are getting overcooked.
And make sure to chop/measure the ingredients. It’s one thing to have a few garlic cloves or a block of cheese on the cutting board, and another to have minced garlic or grated cheese ready to throw in. This is the reason why some recipes that say “total time 30mins” can end up taking an hour to cook, if all the ingredients are ready it will only take 30mins.
And immediately following my explanation on why it’s a good idea to prep everything before making the food I go against my own advice in this recipe and add two thirds of the cheese to the cream and season with salt, pepper and your fresh herbs. But there is a reason, the sliced potatoes are going straight into this mixture, and having it ready before you slice can prevent the potatoes from oxidizing (getting a reddish tint from being exposed to air for too long).
So put the cream mixture aside and get your mandoline ready (not to be confused with the musical instrument), mandolines are great for quickly making uniform slices of anything you slide down the blade (including fingers so be careful). I’ve tried slicing potatoes by hand before, and even posted the results on this blog, it was not pretty. No worries with a mandoline though, potatoes come out great in no time at all.
After slicing, place potatoes directly into cream mixture.
Mix with your hands, coating each and every slice as best you can. Your hands will get messy.
It’s best to have the casserole dish ready to go before mixing the potatoes, greased and everything, that way you can immediately start stacking the slices after they are coated.
After squeezing them all in the dish (it will be tough) pour the cream mixture over the top.
Cover with a lid or tinfoil and get it ready for the oven. The cream mixture has a tendency to spill over the sides so having a drip pan ready to catch those can save your oven some cleaning. After 30mins remove the lid and put back into the oven.
After another 30mins top with the cheese you set aside earlier and put it back in the oven.
And finally after another 30mins it will be just about ready. The top should be dark golden brown.
I probably would have cooked these another 10mins or so. They came out really good, but another few minutes and all the potatoes would have had a nicer crunchy top rather than just most of the potatoes.