Potato Au Gratin without a Mandoline! | Chef Jean-Pierre

Well hello there friends! Just took them out of the oven. They're amazing! Potato gratin. I'm going to show you how to make it. Remember, thumbs up if you like the video, subscribe to the channel, and ring that bell. Stay tuned friends, we're making it right now together. Okay friends, I'm going to show you how to make those gratin potatoes. You know, a couple years ago when we started the channel, I made one. A traditional one, nice serving. Jackie's going to put a link out there for you. If you have a mandolin, it's a must. You should try it. It's a wonderful recipe. This is for the people that may not have a mandolin, or are scared to use theirs. And I totally get it, because it's a dangerous tool. I call it the most dangerous tool in the kitchen. So I totally get it if you don't want to use yours. And so what do you do? If you don't have a mandolin, what do you do? I'm using a yukon called potato. You can use baking potatoes, whatever potatoes you want to use. Nouvelle potatoes, whatever red potatoes, whatever potato you want to use. Some people leave the skin on it, you can leave the skin on it, it's up to you. I got cream in here, heavy whipping cream, that is getting warm. And what I'm going to do, since we're not going to have a mandolin, we're not going to be able to cut the potatoes that thin. You can't cut them with a knife as thin as you would with the mandolin. So I peel them, I put them in water, and then what I do is I take a knife, and I'm using my offset slicer for that because it doesn't stick at all to it, and I just cut them. Okay, I just cut them. Now, they're not going to be exactly the same size because you're never going to be able to do them exactly the same size. It doesn't really matter because we're going to do something different. Now, when you get closer to the end, you're not going to be able to do much more than that, right? So what you do, you go like this. Don't worry about having little pieces. They're okay in gratin potatoes, okay? See, they're okay. They're pieces like that. They're perfectly fine. And then what we're going to do, we're going to poach them in the cream. And in the cream, I'm going to put a little bit of nutmeg, fresh nutmeg. If you don't have fresh nutmeg and you got the nutmeg your grandmother gave you three or 12 years ago, probably that tastes like nothing. So a little bit of nutmeg, it's kind of nice to have. You don't have it, don't worry about it, right? A little bit of salt. Don't put too much salt because we're going to put a lot of cheese in there, right? And then we're going to put a little bit of black pepper, okay? And then we're going to put some garlic cloves here, friends. And the garlic, what I like to do with the garlic, I like to slice it very, very, very, very, very thin. You can use the minced garlic if you want, but very, very, very thin. It's going to poach in the custard and then it's going to bake in the oven and it's going to be very, very mild. So if you have a little piece of garlic that is in there, it's still going to be very, very mild. So no big deal, right? Just very, very little, very, very, very, very thin. You see, look, I'm barely moving my knife, barely moving it. That means my garlic is very, very, very thin, you see, right? And I'm going to put it in here. So that's going to flavor our cream, okay? And flavor nice because poached garlic, poached garlic is very mild, much milder than when you do the, when you saute it in a pan. When you roast it in the oven and when you, when you roast it in the oven and when you poach it like this, people are looking at it, oh, he's losing the knife. I'm doing it very gently, just a little bit. I'm not scraping my bowl. I'm just grabbing it slowly. I can hear you over there. So now you're going to take your potatoes, friends, and you're going to put them in here. If you don't do that, we don't use the end, huh? If you don't do that, your potatoes are going to be way too thick. So I take them, see, I wipe them a little bit like this, and then I just cut them. Take your time. Take your time to do it, friends. See? And when you get to the end of it, you're not going to be able to go like this all the way. So don't be afraid to cut them like that. You'll use those pieces and you'll never know. You'll use them in between the layers. Okay, so here's what I'm going to do, friends. I'm going to poach them in there for about six, seven minutes. I'm going to pre-poach them. If you don't, they're never going to cook in the oven. They're going to still take, they're going to take forever to cook. Let's put it that way. So we're going to pre-cook them. I'm going to do all this, and then I'm going to transfer them in lasagna pan, but I'm going to do all this. So I'm going to do all this now, and I don't want to bore you with my chopping and dicing. When I come back after they have cooked about four or five minutes, okay? I'll be back in a few minutes. Okay, friends. They're not cooked, but they're par-cooked, right? And that's, see, of course, if you have a mandolin, you don't need to do that because you're going to make them so thin. So what I'm doing now, friends, I am taking them out. I'm taking them out of the cream. I'm going to let them cool a little bit so they're easier to handle, you see? And then what we're going to do, we're going to make a cheese custard with this, except this time I'm making it easy. I'm just putting cheese in there, see? So we have our potato right there that we take out, and then we're going to arrange them. I mean, you could, if you didn't care what it looked like, you could really put your cheese in there now and put them all in there, but we're going to do them nice, okay? And so we're going to let them cool just for a second, and then we're going to add the cheese. I'm taking all of the potatoes there, and like I said, they're not cooked, but they're part cooked. You'll see six, seven minutes in the cream like that, and we didn't cut them that big, you know, they're not very thick, so they're part cooked and they're going to be just fine, all right? So what I'm going to do now, friends, so I don't burn my fingers, I am going to, let me take all the potatoes out of there so there's none left in there. There's a couple of little pieces in there that I've already cooked, right? So I'm going to do, I'm going to take this out, and I'm going to put my cheese in there, and I got a cheddar cheese, gruyere, that's gruyere, that's cheddar, and I'm going to put a bit of mozzarella on the top for a nice browning or parmigiano-reggiano, whichever one you have, all right? So we're going to put the cheese right there, and this is cheddar, this is a beautiful English cheddar, I love cheddar. This is a gruyere cheese, put a little bit of the mozzarella here, and we'll put the rest of it on top. We're going to mix all this up, melt it, we're going to season it correctly, make sure it's seasoned. Now, of course, the cheese has seasoned plenty already. We're going to let it melt, and then we're going to arrange the potatoes in there, and then we're going to put the custard on top of it, in between each layer, and we're going to organize it nice, all right? I can put a little bit more salt, but I am going to test it all. I want to wait for the cheese to be melted, and it's very seasoning, very easy, right? Salt and pepper and cheese, and you can smell the garlic already. Smells amazing, right? It really, really, really does, friends. Now, we took the dish, I've got to wait for this to be a little colder. I'm not going to take them right now. I'm not going to handle them right now. I'm going to wait, and I'm just going to turn the heat off here, let the cheese melt slowly, and that's going to be the custard, if you will, without the egg. We didn't put an egg in there. You could put an egg in there too, but it's different, different technique, all right? So I don't want to confuse you with different techniques here, friends. All right, so we're going to wait for this potato to cool a little bit so I can handle them, and then I'm going to put them together and put the custard in it together, and then we're going to bake them in the oven. All right, so I'll be back in a minute. Okay, friends, I put the gloves on, not because I don't mind touching the potato, because they are hot still, and I don't want to burn myself. This may help, I'm not sure. I put a little butter in the bottom of the dish, and you see, look, look how beautiful our custard is right there. It's not really a custard, because you don't put any eggs. Custard is supposed to put eggs in there, right? So what you do, friends, you take your potatoes, and don't worry too much how you put them. You know, you want to kind of put them nice though. I said don't worry too much, and you watch. I'm going to put them nice, okay? You know how I'm going to do it, right? I'm going to do it nice, because that's in my DNA. So I'm going to make sure it's nice, but the most important layer, obviously, friends, it's going to be the top layer. It's going to be more important than the bottom layer, all right? So I'm going to... If I don't burn my mouth, I burn my hands, and the gloves don't do nothing. I thought it was going to protect me, then protect me nothing. So look, here's what I'm going to do, okay? I could just wait, right? And instead I come back, which is what I'm going to end up doing, because they're too hot, right? All right, so now, what I'm going to do now, I'm going to take a layer of the cheese and the cream. I'm going to put it right here like this, you see? Just like this, see? Everybody can do this. It's not complicated. Nothing I do is complicated, when you think about it. I didn't even use a special tool this time, right? So now I'm going to put this, and I'm going to put more, and I'm going to put more custard, and I'm going to put more, and I'm going to put more custard, all right? And I'm not going to bore you with it, so I'll be back when I'm all done, okay, friends? I'll be back in a few minutes. Okay, friends, well, it's the end of it, so now we got a couple more things to do. And very important, I don't know if Jack saw it, but I pushed it with my hand, like, really, really down. When you're done with it, when you're finished, the gloves, it makes it easy, but you got to go with your hand. And you push it down, and then the excess custard is going to come up to the top, you see? And then the little broken pieces, I put them inside, you'll never know they're in there, you know? So it makes it easy that way, right? So now you don't need a mandolin, eh, friends? And then what we're going to do, we're going to take the mozzarella on top, I like mozzarella, it gives a really nice little brownish, brownish, it browns nice, right? But Parmigiano Reggiano sometimes doesn't brown so good, so I don't like to put it on there sometimes. So that's it, my friends. And one more thing we got to do, we're going to put it on, in the oven. I like to put it on a cookie sheet because if it bubbles, if it bubbles up, you know, it gets hot sometimes, and it bubbles, and bubbles, what is he talking about? You know, like it bubbles up, and then it goes in the bottom of the oven, so I put it on the cookie sheet. And you know what I like to do? I like to clean my dish before I bake it, because I don't know about you, but I don't like to cook the clean dishes that have baked, baked cheese on it, or baked anything on it, right? They're more difficult to clean, right? So I just take a cookie sheet, and, uh, and I put it on there, and I just bake it in the oven. That's all I do. No, nothing special, I got my oven going at 355, 375. I put it on a steel plate, you certainly don't need one, I just like to put it on there, it's a habit, but you certainly don't need one. Put it in the oven at 350, 375, and when it's ready, beautiful golden brown, we're gonna take them out, we're gonna let them rest a little bit so I don't burn myself, and I'll show you what they look like on the inside. Be back in a few minutes. Okay friends, well, it's still, still hot, so I just wanted to show you what it looks like on the inside, because it smells amazing. I'm telling you, it smells amazing. I know you're gonna love it, so let's go in, and, uh, and we're gonna cut it right there. I just wanted to show you, right, look at this, look at this, friends, look at this, my friends, look how gorgeous that is. Well, you probably can't really see it that much, let me just, uh, where do I go? I stay right there. Where do I go? Right there is good, right? So I go right there, let me just put it right there, and, uh, and, uh, okay, it's beautiful, friends, absolutely gorgeous. Can you see the potatoes are cooked perfect? Oh, mmm, I got a confession to make. All right, stop eating. I was gonna put brie in there too, and I had put it in the freezer just a few minutes before we started shooting. I said, I'm gonna remove the rhyme, it'll be easier to do when it's cold, and guess what, I forgot, but that's a good idea. Friends, I hope you make it. Remember, thumbs up if you like the video, subscribe to the channel, and ring that bell. Again, thank you for watching, friends, we'll see you again soon.