Probably the Best Side Dish in the World

This is potentially the best potato gratin you will ever see. Meltingly soft, really beautiful and crispy on the outside. And it's actually quite simple to make at home. This is an absolute showstopper. So it all starts with a tin of beans. If you've not got a tin of beans, this works with any tin. This is a recipe for gratin dauphinoise stacks. Step one, throw these things in the bin. If you've got kids, obviously give them to your kids, but no self-respecting adults should be eating beans. And then take the label off, wash out all that nasty bean juice. And there you go, you've got the perfect mould. So the reason that this is going to be the most effective thing to cook this in is because it's sealed at the bottom. So most ring moulds will be just a ring. But to cook our ultimate gratin dauphinoise, we actually want to cook them in a water bath. So submerged in a bain-marie so that they cook really evenly. The top actually caramelizes and gets really nice and, you know, sticky and sort of concentrated, crispy. And this works perfectly for that. For the gratin dauphinoise, it's pretty classic. Always start with a really good, healthy amount of butter. And then we're just going to lightly melt that. And whilst we melt it, we're going to start slicing our garlic. Now, if you want to, you can use a nice sharp knife, but I like to use a mandolin. We want really, really beautiful thin layers. So the reason we're doing nice thin slices of garlic is the slices will mimic the structure of the potatoes, but also what it'll do is it'll stop the garlic from burning as much. So if we minced the garlic or crushed it, as it cooks, it might over caramelize and get a little bit bitter. Stop the butter when it starts to brown. Okay, so we've got these beautiful thin, tiny little thin slices of garlic. And we basically just want to take the rawness off them. And then we're looking just to soften the garlic. Damn, that smells good. So what you're looking for is when this garlic almost goes a little bit translucent. So it won't take long. We're literally talking like four to five minutes of garlic. It's still got very little color on it. So that's when we're going to remove it and sort of reserve it for when we layer up our potatoes later. Nice. So once the garlic's out of your butter, whack in a bit of cream. And then we're basically just thinking about this cream as an infusion of that garlic butter. And I've got some thyme here. So just add half of this thyme. The rest we're going to pick and put between the actual layers. Basically, the cream needs to be hot when it hits the spuds because it starts to activate the starch in the potatoes or anything above 75 degrees will start to activate that. So we want to keep it warm, but we don't want to reduce it. As it cooks very slowly in the oven, it'll naturally reduce on itself and the potatoes and starch in the potatoes will thicken up this cream. Nice little hack. We're using Gruyere. Gruyere usually comes with rind. The reason we're using Gruyere is because it's sweet and nutty. So it works really well in something like this, but also it's a great melter without splitting. So always the balance of a good dauphinoise is managing the cream and the butter splitting out and reducing in the right way. Okay, so potato-wise, we always bang on about this, but it's always important to use the right spud for the right job. This is an agria potato, which we use quite a lot on the channel, but perfect for this kind of thing. If you notice, the sort of texture and the look of it is slightly more golden than something like a russet or something like a King Edward. These type of potatoes have a higher carotenoid content. It's also the same stuff in an egg yolk, and it's the pigmentation that makes it look more golden and that will go through to the final product. So normally I don't actually peel my potatoes when I make a terrine, but with dauphinoise, obviously because of the cream, I don't think it looks aesthetically nice to have the peel on there. But if you don't want to do that and you like the peel, totally fine if you leave it on. So for the potatoes, what we want to do is we want to cut them at a certain way just so they go into the mold really nicely. So just go in like a cross section. And what you want is like, they can be fairly thick in a dauphinoise. It doesn't really matter about them being like crazy thin, like in a thousand layer potato. So much easier on a mandolin. So it goes straight down and then you can actually stack them up nicely. What we're trying to do here is just make sure that they're sort of the right size and consistent shape to go into the tin. And the best way to do that is just got one of the tins here and then cut out. Now don't rinse your spuds. So basically we want to keep in as much of that starch as possible. Basically the starch in the potato, whenever you're doing a terrine or layering stuff up, basically will help stick that terrine together. Okay, so with these, obviously you're going to get quite a lot. Once you've got all your sort of potatoes laid out, you are going to get quite a lot of waste if you cut all these. So the reason obviously we're doing it is because we want it to look very aesthetically pleasing. Absolutely, if you're doing this at home, just pack in these potatoes. The important thing is they just need to fit in whatever you're trying to stack up. So this one, you know, it would be absolutely fine to go in there, but we're making the ultimate dinner party potato. So we're going to make it look nice and fancy. So all of these little bits of trim, save them for Spanish omelette in the morning. Okay, so our cream is fully infused with those rinds. You can still see it's not split out, which is a good thing. I've got some pot of boiling water on here and then I'm basically ready now to start stacking it up. But first of all, we have to make a new type of cartouche that you've probably never seen before. Make a micro touche. So just cut some greaseproof and do some little squares. And then when we take them out later, you'll see that the dolphin wires don't stick to the bottom. Micro touche, aw, isn't that cute? So whack that into your mould before we're going to start layering them all up. As we discussed, we want our cream to be nice and warm whilst it goes onto the spuds. So it activates the starch inside. And what I'm actually going to do is I'm going to season the cream, but I want to over season it. So I'm not going to season too much of the potatoes because it'll start drawing out the water from the spuds. It should taste almost like a third too salty. And I've just got a big pot of water on here. So this is going to be the boiling water for the bain-marie. All right, perfect. Now, so you're ready to start layering up your little stacks. Potato goes in. What we're going to do is roughly about three to four slices and then we're going to spoon over a touch of cream. And then once we've added our cream mix, I'm just going to add one little slice of Gruyere. And then really important to remember, your little sort of layers of confit garlic from earlier before. We've got potato, cream, cheese, garlic, a little bit of thyme, and then more potato. When you do this as well, try and push down, make sure the potatoes are completely submerged the whole way through. Probably would have to say this is the most decadent of all potatoes dishes. I mean, for me, it's like the best thing about it is you get the layers of potato, which are almost like steamed in confit at the same time. So much fat in the butter and in the cream. But the way of cooking it like this basically just makes it the ultimate texture. Really, really soft, really melting potato that's got sort of no resistance whatsoever. And then as the cream caramelizes on top, it's almost between like a cheese souffle and a boulanger. So we're going right the way up to the top and just make sure that it's completely submerged. So I've got a bit more garlic. Don't put any more cheese on top because it's going to stick to the foil as it cooks. And then we want it to almost steam. I think this is where people often get dauphinoise wrong. You instinctively think it's something that you would sort of slow cook in the oven, like roast in the oven. But actually, it's all about steaming a good dauphinoise. And this is just going to help. Basically, it's going to stop the cream from splitting and help soften the potato nice and quick. OK, so next up, this is a really important stage. So I've got some boiling water. Pour it into our bain-marie. Even if you don't do the method of stacking the potatoes in these little pots, just adding this to your dauphinoise technique will give you some pretty incredible results. The amount of water I put in there is literally just, it's enough to cover pretty much all of the potato, apart from maybe the top layer of slices. And then we're just going to really carefully put it into the oven. And then we're going to chill them down, ready to finish in the oven later. So 150 degrees, about 45 minutes should be fine. OK, so potatoes have been in for about 50 minutes. And if you're in any doubt as to whether they're cooked, I just use a cake tester. And you should feel absolutely zero resistance. So they do feel really, really soft. So just take them out and then lift your little moulds out of the tin. And there we go. That's what we're looking for. So you should have a light golden colour starting to form. My main hatred for a dauphinoise is that it's greasy because all of the cream has completely sort of evaporated. Whereas here, like the cream's almost set, like you would set a creme brulee. And it's formed this beautiful little layer around there, but you can still see it's still cream. It's not split out and just butter at this stage. Just lightly sort of press them down, just so you get a nice neat shape at the end. So whack these in the fridge until they're completely cold. Okay, cool. So these have been chilling for 40 minutes. You can see they're nicely set now. You can see they almost like naturally start to separate away from the mould. And then I'm just going to go around with a nice sharp knife. You almost want to like keep the layer of caramelised crispy cheese on there. So release them nicely. Then flip over your tin, open her up, and give it a little push from the other side. Take your little micro touche off the bottom. Don't forget that one. What I love about this is like that is literally the perfect size portion already. So once all of your beautiful cheesy stacks are out of the moulds, go in like maybe three quarters of the way. So don't go through the bottom. Make a nice little hole, take out the inside, and then we're going to put in a small piece of cheese. So just take a block of cheese, go in with your apricot, and then just insert that bad boy right in there and put the lid back on. Okay, so last but not least, just finish with a little grater of cheese, which just hides our little potato nipples as well. Okay, so once the potatoes are just nicely covered with cheese, I'm just going to whack them on some grease proof stuff and stick them to the base of the tray. And then they're ready for the reheat. Potatoes go into a preheated oven, 180 degrees, for around 10 to 15 minutes to crisp them up and get more beautiful and golden. All those layers of brouille, like be in between, have all started to caramelise on the outside. So you get this crispy layer of cheese on the outside, potatoes are epically soft in the middle, and then you've got the molten cheese in there as well. So just to finish our little dauphinois stacks, just finish with a little bit of Maldon salt, and then a nice sort of layer of chives on the top. What a treat, looks so good. Nice to serve them nice and hot out of the oven. So what you should get is an awesome little cheese melt in the middle. Oh, look at that. Cheesy nuggets of really soft potato, crispy on the outside, beautifully cheesy and stringy in the middle. Relatively cheap, relatively easy, an absolute showstopper. If you serve these, you'd serve the best steak in the world with it, but people are going to be going away talking about these bad boys. And you can do them 90% of the way before an event, then just whack them in the oven.