The Best Potato Dish We’ve Ever Made

Hasselback potatoes, often underrated, but could this be the best potato dish we've ever done? It's not all about the crunch, it's about impacting as much flavour into the potato as possible. Not something I usually make all the time, but when they're done right, they are literally one of the best potatoes out there. And we're gonna show you today an awesome recipe for how you can do this at home. We're using a Yukon Gold, which is an American variety of potato, God bless America. Might be tricky to get them in the UK, if you're watching from the UK, but a good old standard Marris Piper will do the job well. But this, we've just found, we did numerous tests and we found that the Yukon Gold was the best one for this. So we're going to, we've washed our potatoes, we just cut a little layer off the bottom, just enough to give it a flat surface. That's all we're really looking for at this stage. And then what we're gonna do is we're going to then take a skewer or a toothpick, or you want something thin, not too thick, because what we're going to do is we're going to insert this into the bottom of the potato, about half a centimetre up from your cut side. And you need to do this nice and slow, down the centre of the potato. Oh, my finger! Gotcha. So as you can see there, toothpick, about half a centimetre up from the bottom. So that is step one. A common rep for a Hasselback is that it should be like super crispy, and that all the slits are in there so that it gives it more surface area to crisp up. Now, that is obviously a nice, important factor, but we believe, through our testing, that the slits and the reason for them, or the most beneficial reason for the slits, is to impact as much flavour into the potato as you can. You came here for crispiness, you're leaving with flavour and crispiness. True time, true trick, true change. So we're just going to trim the edge of those skewers off, just so the potatoes all fit in the pan. Comes from a place called Hasselbacken in Sweden. Not many times have I cooked a Swedish recipe, so this is one of the first times you'll see me making a Swedish recipe, apart from IKEA meatballs, which I do love. Who doesn't? So I'm just going to trim off those skewers there. Ba-da-bum, ba-da-bum, ba-da-bum. And then the magic happens. So what you're going to do then is you're literally just going to lay the potato down in front of you. You're going to make three, four millimetre slices, ever so slightly on the angle, across the potato. You can't go any lower than the toothpick. The toothpick is stopping you cutting all the way through the potato. And there you have it. Perfect slits in your potato. Perfect every time. You're never going to cut through the potato. Easy peasy. An absolute perfect technique for cutting through your potatoes. So we tried to, probably about two years ago, we tried to put Hasselbacks on the menu at Fallot. And we could never actually get a recipe that was good enough. Because like many, I imagine, we were just chasing that crispy exterior. And wanting it to stay crispy for ages after it came out of the fryer. It's not really what it's about. It's about just maximising the flavour in there. And then you get a little bit of texture at the end, which is like a little bonus. But you can really utilise all these cuts to impact so many different things into them. Enter our lovely chicken stock. I'm not going to add any salt at this stage, because obviously our chicken stock has quite a lot of natural seasoning in it. So I'm submerging our potatoes in the stock. And then we're going to cook them on the hob here with a lid on. And obviously the potatoes will slightly shrink as the cooking process happens. Somewhere in the region of 30 minutes to cook, but we're going to monitor them, check on them every 10 minutes until they're done. So this has been about 35 minutes. So potatoes are cooked, nice and soft. And now we're just really gently going to lift up our potatoes. Drain off that excess liquid and just place them onto a tray. So the potatoes are completely soft. Obviously some of the edge, some of the little slices, if you cut them a little bit too thin, look like they're falling apart a little bit. But that'll add to the charm later on once we start to crisp them up. And obviously some of the, where the levels aren't quite accurate, some of the end slices might fall off a little bit. We're going to remove our stock into a pan. We're going to put our clean pan back on the stove. And then we're going to put that on a low heat. We're going to take some garlic cloves, we're going to crush it. We're going to place that into the bottom of the pan. And this is going to continue to flavour all through that potato. I'm adding like 10 cloves here. I mean, I personally love the flavour of garlic, but if you want to do a bit more subtle, you can obviously go a bit less. Then you're going to go in with some clarified butter. So to make the clarified butter, you can do it a few different ways. Nice, easy ways. Just pop it in the microwave and just turn it on and then let it sit. And then the milk solids will fall to the bottom of the container and the butter will raise to the top. Or you can do the same process in a pan, just turn the heat down really low and just let it naturally separate. So at this stage, you want to be super delicate with your potatoes. So we're going to leave the toothpicks in and then we're just going to submerge the potatoes into the butter. The aroma. These little Swedes know what they're doing, don't they? Then we're going to go in with our hard herbs. So we'll just dot it all in and around the butter. Oh, it smells so good. It's always good to start with the hard herbs. I never like stripping them too much. Because I find obviously it's easier just to put them in and then you can easily just remove them. Transferring it to an oven set at 225. So pop the, get it really hot first and then we'll obviously, we'll check on it. They're 30 minutes approx cooking time, but we'll be basting it regularly every five to 10 minutes. Just give it a little wiggle. My Hasselback don't jiggle jiggle. They fold. Sorry. So super careful with your pan as you're transferring it. Just going to reduce down some of the cooking liquid, cooking stock. Make a nice glaze for our spuds. We don't want to waste that stock. So we're going to reduce that down, add some fresh butter, some acidity and use that almost as a glaze for the potatoes. ------- hell, what could possibly go wrong here? Oh, that's money. So as you can see, spuds are looking fantastic. Fantastic looking spuds there lads. So just going to take out some of that butter and then just sort of like pour it over. You can smell all those flavours, the garlic and the rosemary and the thyme and then back into the oven. So this has been about 20 minutes now. They're looking really nice. Probably needs a little bit longer. As you can see now, you've got all that buttery flavour. You've got, obviously you've got the natural sugars that are in the chicken stock is helping to darken the potato. Back in. Look at them. So we are going to leave those in the pan now just to settle a little bit. If we move them too soon, they might fall apart because they're probably going to stick a little bit. So just by letting them sit, they'll just relax, release from the bottom of the pan and we can transfer them nicely. Add some butter to my sauce that we made from the reduced chicken stock and then just turn it off the heat and just emulsify that in really gently. To that, we're going to add a little bit of lemon juice as well. Just light, just changes the colour. It makes the sauce richer, but it also just reduces, dilutes that really intense chicken flavour. So I'm just going to remove the chicken from the oven. Sorry, that's the dinner. Look at that. That's the ******* money shot, boys and girls. All those crevices, which are crispy and broken up and the sweetness of the stock, caramelising with the butter on the base. It's got this like ultimate layer, like look at that. If Will was here, he'd be snorting these off his phone. And again, look at that. Sorry, that was inappropriate. Oh, look at it. Just look at it. Actually mental. I'm going to break one up. I'm going to sacrifice this one for the greater good. That ******* layers, bro. Smells like chicken. Beautiful. Anyway, back to business. So removing all the skewers. Oh, look at that. Anyway, back to business, sorry. Oh! Got all these now. I'm going to take all my skewers out. I'm going to go around with a little bit of fine salt and just season from a slight height on top of each one. As I said, the chicken, the reduction of the chicken stock does season the potato very, very well. So for this plate, we're going to go nice and finessed. And now we're just going to layer up our champagne display at a party. ------- party. Oh, the thing of beauty. They're so simple in real terms. Oh, they're like perfectly designed just to share because all we've got to do is just run your knife down the cuts and they perfectly just divvy out into elegant portion. Look at that. And even once they cool down slightly, that sort of juice, it's got like soaked into them. You get this, like now you've got like a sweet, sticky mess on them. They're buttery and soft like the fondant. Because the chicken stock's been poached in them, when you fry them, when they go in the butter, they're like a, they're crispy, but they're like a slightly chewy crispiness. It almost looks knackered, but when you try them, it's a real, a real unique sort of flavour and texture. Very few ingredients really in it, you know, once you've got the stock and you can buy that in. But very different, very unique, often done so differently. And I think nowhere near as good as this, but I mean, you can't not love that. Look at this, look at it, like crispy, sticky. I definitely might have to rethink about putting these on our menu. They're delicate and they take a little bit of skill, but the end result is pretty sublime. To see two of our other favourite potato dishes, for Will's thousand layer potatoes with bacon, click here. And to see the ultimate boulanger potato, click here. I'll get into it, boys and girls.