3 French Potato Recipes Every Cook Should Know | French Fundamentals | Bon Appétit

I'm going to introduce you to my three favorite ways of using potatoes. So to start, we'll have pomme à nain, which is kind of like a potato cake. Then we have pomme dauphine, which is this pillowy little potato fried pillows. And then pomme purée, which is the silkiest of them all and is this buttery decadence of mashed potatoes. Pomme à nain is maybe a bit less common. You don't see it very much just because how labor intensive it is. It's basically thin layers of potatoes put one after the other. And in between the only ingredient you will have is clarified butter and a touch of salt. I'm going to start with Yukon Gold potatoes. Yukon Golds are great because of their very rich buttery taste. And also they just hold their shape. You're looking for a potato that will get crispy, but will also keep the nice layers without going into mush. You just want to peel them nicely. You want to keep all that starch so you're not looking to rinse them. And now the next step is just the mandoline. It has to be perfect because otherwise it will not kind of like compact and condense as like a cake. So you're looking for quite a thin potato. You want to make sure you get quite long just because first of all, it's going to taste the best time and you'll have something that looks a bit nicer. I'm just going to make piles of potatoes and I'm going to punch just the first layer that when you put it, like, you know, when it goes upside down, you're going to have a perfect circular pavana. I would say if you don't have a mandoline, you won't be able to make it the way it should be made. The pavana really requires very minimal ingredients, but you do need a touch or a click. When you slice potatoes, they, you know, they will oxidize, so you need to move fast because in some recipes you can rinse them and keep them in water, which will prevent that. But in that case, you really don't want to because otherwise you're taking all that starch away and the potatoes are not going to stick to one another. So there's only one rule here, work fast. That's my last potato. Here I have clarified butter. Clarified butter is just basically regular butter that was brought to temperature low and slow and the milk solids separate. And while we're doing this, it creates a more even coloring. It doesn't burn when you're going at higher temperatures. I'm just putting a bit of butter bottom of the pan. This will help stick the parchment paper bottom. So to start, we're going to do what we call a cartouche. Cartouche is basically this parchment that is going to be cut perfect diameter of the bottom of the pan. For that, you want to fold that a certain way. Paper is parchment. And now that I folded it, I want to just make sure that I'm going to be at a perfect diameter of the bottom. Like that. Yeah, it's thick. Then we'll put a bit of butter bottom. Perfect. If you don't put the cartouche and there's one slice of potato that's sticking in the bottom, when you're going to flip it, it's going to kind of look not so nice. You'll have some uneven pieces. So now the idea is to punch the potatoes. We have to move fast because it's starting to brown. So you want to take the bigger slices of potatoes that you have and punch them. We don't need to do all of it. It's just for the bottom layer. And again, this is not really mandatory. You don't have to. It's just like a little extra labor of love to show that you care. At the first restaurant I worked at, we're making them like tiny, tiny potatoes and also the thinnest possible. It would take us like two, three hours a day. And also sometimes we would sell out during service and we had to make them like on the fly because there was no way we would be allowed to run out of them. So it was kind of a stressful preparation for me. So I think we're pretty good with the potatoes. We have the layer. Now it's time to build. This is the bottom of the dish, but this will be the top of the presentation because we're going to flip it upside down. So this is really where you want to put all your energy to make sure it looks super nice. Then it's just basically layering potatoes, putting clarified butter and a bit of salt. That's it. And repeating that process over and over again until we're done. You want to make sure they're nice and tight, compact together, just because if you leave too much space, they won't really like mold into each other. You want to make sure you season every single layer. It might feel like a lot of salt, but a pinch on every layer is going to give you a very even cooking and like tasting potato. And you want to just like warm it with the clarified butter and like drizzle it. Now it's all about speed, making sure you're moving fast. Potatoes are not browning. There's not a specific amount of layers that you're looking for. I would say you do want a certain amount just to make sure you have texture. I feel like if there's not enough layers, it's going to be quite crispy, kind of like a rusty, and you want it quite soft. And I don't know, like you're cutting into butter in a way. You want to make sure also it's quite like pressed down but everything cooks together. And I'm adding butter at the end. It's just this thing that we used to do at the restaurant I worked at. It gives like this little amount of the milk salt that you want, but not enough for it to disrupt the perfect color that you're looking for. A lot of butter. Put a lid on. This will allow the potatoes to really like steam, cook through, and kind of get that sweetness out of it. And then you're looking for caramelization, nice color, and the exterior that's a bit crunchy. In the oven, the pomegranate will cook at 400 degrees Fahrenheit for roughly 50 to 55 minutes. Then I'll take the lid off, probably another 45, 50 minutes, just to make sure you have this nice golden crust. Okay. So moment of truth. This is kind of like the taddy level of stress version for potato. Let's pray we don't break this thing. Okay. I'm super happy with the foie gras. I love the crispy edges. This is what you're looking for, for something that has some crispiness, but also to have the kind of really nice super fondant, which means you're cutting through the potato and it's melting in your mouth with all the butter. So let's cut into it. This is really what you're looking for, this like mille-feuille of potatoes, cooked through, nice crispy edges. You can see that it's full of butter. It's like a potato cake. So now it's time to make pomme d'aufine. A pomme d'aufine is a mix of potato pulp that you fold into a pâte à choux. The pâte à choux is the base for very classic French desserts, such as choux, éclairs, religieuses, and all these things. So it's just a mixture of this batter, potatoes fried, and just like golden, crispy, delicious, and perfect. So first step for this recipe, it's just cooking the potatoes on salt. Why I like to cook potatoes in salt, it's like when you're making gnocchi, you want to release the moisture on the potato, so you're not adding moisture to the pâte à choux. Now the potatoes are cooked. Best way to check, just to run your knife inside, they come out like that, we're good. Every recipe calls for different ways of cooking potatoes. You know, you might think, oh, I mean, cooking them on salt and in water is pretty much the same thing, but depending on what you're looking for to achieve in this recipe, you need to adapt the cooking method. So here it's salt, because you really, really want a dry, firm pulp. So this is a lovely food mill. Basically, it makes mash of any vegetable that you want. It keeps really just the pulp. You want to work those potatoes while they're still hot, because otherwise it gets a bit gummy and hard to work with because of the starch. You cut the potato. You want to peel potatoes. We're using Yukon Gold. I think it's a very versatile potato. It's the one I'm using for all three recipes. This is another French recipe named after a woman, which is dauphine, which means the wife of the heir to the throne. So smashing that, making sure we get all that dry pulp, right? We have our potato pulp. Now we're going to make pate a choux. Pate a choux is pretty simple. It's one of the first recipes they teach you in pastry school. It's an easy recipe, but it's also very easy to mess up if you don't do it the right way. Some people do half water, half milk. Here, water it is. You add your butter. We're just going to wait for it to simmer. So pate a choux is a very classic pastry dough that puffs in the oven into like big, shallow shells. It's the base for gougere. You know, this little cheese puff that's very famous in France. Here we have water and butter simmering. We'll add our flour. And here you just want to make sure everything is incorporated. It's going to start looking like potato pulp kind of like dough. You want to dry out that dough. So you don't want it to stick to the sides anymore. You want to make sure that the flour is cooked off. I like to use this with a hard spatula compared to like one like that, that bends a bit more. Just because you want like a hard grip. You want to make sure that you're hitting all the sides. And here you see that the pate a choux is ready. It's rolling on all the sides. It's not sticking at all. Let it sit for like a minute, minute and a half. The reason why is because when you're going to add the eggs, you don't want it to cook instantly. You want it to fold gently, it's not a scramble. I'm going to add the egg one by one. You really want the eggs to be fully incorporated before you add the next one. It's going to take a bit of time to kind of like incorporate at the beginning. So you see how hard it is to incorporate the egg already with one egg. If you put the three at the same time, it's like mission impossible. We're lacking of that clear V that I'm looking for. So just a touch of water. This is a question of experience. You know, understanding what you're working with. This is what we're looking for, this V drop. We'll make sure there are no lumps. Here we have the pate a choux. We're going to mix in with the potato pulp. Anyway, and you want to work it together. Let's try it for salt. That is again, a great canvas for you to season to your liking, Espelette pepper, thyme, chopped, I don't know, tarragon, whatever you want. So now we're looking pretty good. Again, try it. We're good to go. There are different ways of shaping those pommes dauphines. If you want to be fancy, put it in a piping bag or a piping tip and you put like twine attached to both sides of here, like a string of twine. And you're just going to pipe it upside down like that and they're going to fall naturally, which can look a bit fancier, a bit more restaurant style. Today we're going to do a bit of a more rustic version and that is just with a spoon. I like to have a bit of oil in a little cup like that, oil spoon. This really helps like release the dough that's quite moist. And we're just going to take it with one spoon. You want to just shape it, dump it. That's it. Because it's going to be imperfect, there's going to be lots of like little nooks and crannies where, you know, you're going to have this very crispy edge that's super delicious. It's probably going to take four minutes. You want a really nice golden exterior and the temperature with four minutes should cook the egg through. Potato is already cooked, so you're just looking to cook the flour and the egg. You don't want to overcrowd the pot. You want to make sure they have room to breathe and fry. It's hard to resist, not fold them too early, but you want to wait the proper amount of time. It's horrible. I feel like I'm like, there's like saliva just by like the smell. It just reminds me of my childhood. You just want to eat them like right now and you know you're going to burn yourself. But that with a bit of like maybe like smoked salmon and like farm fresh chives, that's like a dream. They're beautiful. You see that they start like bursting. The potato is like kind of like trying to get out. That's perfection. So you want to make sure when you're frying that you always salt straight after. Like that, it kind of like soaks in the batter and always put a towel or paper underneath to really get all the moisture from the frying onto this. Because if you, for example, put these little pommes de fines straight on a tray, they're going to release oil and absorb back into it. And you're going to have something that's mushy and not. That's it. That's what you want. Oof. This is piping hot. It's like a cloud. So now it's time to make pomme purée, which is the French way of saying mashed potatoes. It's the version that resembles the potato puree from Joël Robuchon, which is this very famous commercial star chef that makes this ultra silky, buttery, melt-in-your-mouth potato puree. Yukon gulbs are my preference. Potatoes go in. And then you want to cover probably like that amount above the potatoes to make sure that when it boils, it doesn't evaporate. You want to cook your potatoes in a cold water to start, just because by the time it goes up in heat, the potatoes will cook evenly. If you put your potatoes straight into hot water, it will cook the outside, but the inside won't be cooked. Our water and potatoes. And now, heavily salt it. One, two, three. Looks like a lot, but the skin actually prevents it from getting too much inside, and you need the potatoes to be salted throughout. We're going to wait for these to boil for 25, 30 minutes, and I'm going to warm my milk in the meantime. Best way to check if they're cooked, you put your knife through them. If potatoes release instantly, they're cooked. Take the potatoes out on a tray. And then you have to act fast. You don't want the potatoes to cool too much. So the idea is to just peel them. I like to cut them in four and put them in the pool. I love potato skins in fries and a lot of different preparations. I just don't think that in mashed potatoes, it's very enjoyable. I think that having this like very silky smooth consistency is like pure luxury in a way. When you do a pomme purée, you can't really use a food processor or blender just because it's going to release the starches and make it extremely gummy. That's the one thing, even in restaurants, we have to use the food mill no matter what. This is more like taking it up a notch. This is called a tami. It's also a utensil that we use in bakeries to sift flour or any powder to make sure it's really nice and uniform. This is maybe the only step that you can skip if you don't want to go through the hassle of doing that. It really ensures that there's no more pieces of pulp in the potato, but this is also why when you go to the restaurant and you're like, why is that puree so good? This is what we do. So this is a plastic bench scraper. It's really the ideal tool. And then you just take all of the bottom part like that. When I use a tami, I love to kind of scrape anything on parchment because it's clean and I can just like dump it directly in my pan without making a mess. So what makes the rebuchon potato so special is that you're going to add moisture, but it's controlled. For example, if I don't dry out my potato puree, I already have moisture in that. I'm going to add more moisture and it's going to dilute the flavor of potato because this is like water in that. So by taking that water out and adding flavored moisture, which is milk and butter, it will just intensify the flavor of potato. And now you just want to dry it out. So what you're looking for is to see that the potato is not really sticking to the edges anymore. So that's when they're dry. So a few minutes, don't go crazy. Don't bring color to the bottom of your pan. Try and move fast. Pretty good here. The goal now is to really add the milk bit by bit. You want to warm the milk because as soon as the potato gets cold, the starch gets really hard to work with. And so you want that temperature to be similar to what it already is right now. Yeah, you have to work fast because you want to make sure the potatoes don't cool off. You know, it's all about keeping all the components warm. The texture you're looking for puree is kind of spoonable. I'm going to keep the rest of my milk and adjust after I put the butter to see if it needs a bit more. You want the butter cold to really kind of emulsify with your potato. What makes the Robuchon potato famous is the amount of butter. It's roughly for like a kilo of potato, you'll have like 400 grams of butter. So it's quite rich. It's a lot. You can warm a touch. Don't go full heat when you reheat it because otherwise the butter will split. There's just too much fat in that preparation. So you want to go low and slow. It smells like butter, it's crazy. I want to use a whisk to make sure there are no lumps. Take a spoon, taste, it needs a lot of salt. We're going to go quite generous here. I think it does need the last cubes of butter. Add a touch of milk. Sounds crazy, but I think it's a lot of butter. So you know that the potato puree is done when the texture is kind of like this. See, it's spoonable, it kind of folds, kind of does this V-shape. It's like, kind of like pate a choux. You're looking for a really like V-shaped drop. It's luscious, silky smooth, and also it just tastes good. So again, just taste, make sure the salt hits it. That's it. All you need is a bowl. I like the plating quite simple. So the idea is you take your spatula and you're just going to come at an angle and make this little decoration. Touch of fleur de sel on top. That's potato puree, pomme puree. Time and taste. Honestly, there's nothing better in this world than butter and potato. And together, it's just the best. We are done with what I think are the three most impressive potato recipes. These are the three most technical recipes that I think represent what French food is about. It's about simplicity in ingredients and care of technique.