Claire Makes Potato Gratin | Bon Appétit

Potato gratin is one of those incredibly comforting dishes that every holiday cook should have in their arsenal. Everyone loves it. It's creamy and cheesy and delicious, and that's what I'm gonna show you today. The first thing I'll do is rub the dish with a little bit of garlic. Inside all of the surfaces, around all the sides. Now, just wanna butter it. It's not a low-fat dish, but it's the holidays, so. The next step is to assemble my cream mixture. Two and a half cups of heavy cream, kosher salt, some freshly ground black pepper, four garlic cloves, I have two shallots, and thyme. Now, I'm gonna put this on the stove and simmer it really gently. I just wanna simmer this on low until the garlic and shallots are really tender, and they're ready to blend. As the cream mixture cools down, I'm gonna slice the potatoes. And you could do it by hand. A mandolin is way faster. I don't even bother to peel the potatoes because I kinda like the texture and also the look of the skins. So, four pounds of thinly sliced potato. It's a lot, but this recipe feeds 12, so you kinda need it. But with this recipe, I put them in the baking dish kinda fanned out at an angle, and that way, every piece touches the bottom of the dish and is exposed to the top, and that means every slice has a little bit of crispiness and a little bit of creaminess. And we've already seasoned our cream mixture with salt, so this gets poured over, and that's it. No need to add any additional seasoning. So, I cover this really tightly with aluminum foil, and I have my oven preheated to 325. I don't want the cream to get too hot or over-reduced because then it can break. Now that the gratin has cooled a little bit, I sprinkle it with three ounces of finely grated gruyere and then an ounce of finely grated parm. I'm ready to put this under the broiler. It goes for five to 10 minutes until the entire top is kinda bubbling and brown and crispy all over. It smells so good. The cheese was just bubbling a second ago. The gruyere got really gooey, and the parm got really crispy. And because I sliced the potatoes so thinly, it's so much fun to eat. It's delicious. Just take it with you. I'm fired. I hope that this makes it into your Thanksgiving recipe arsenal. So good, so easy, and it will feed a lot of people.