Mom's Scalloped Potato Gratin - Food Wishes

[Music] hello this is chef john from foodwishes.com with mom scallop potato gratin that's right these scalloped potatoes were one of my favorite foods growing up but then i went to culinary school and i learned according to classical methods how it was supposed to be made and that's basically how i've been making it ever since but recently for whatever reason i went back and tried to recreate my mother's version and i was reminded why i loved her version so much in the first place and it's that love in that dish that i'm very excited to be sharing so with that let's go ahead and get started with three large russet potatoes which are the ones that look like this and these are your classic baking potato and what we'll do after peeling and rinsing them is go ahead and slice them up and to do that safely we're going to slice off one quarter inch piece but not from the flat side or the narrow side but basically somewhere in between the two and that will allow our potato to sit nice and flat on the cutting board at which point we'll start making nice even cuts at about a 45 degree angle attempting to get them as even as we can and the first major difference between my mom's version and the culinary school version is that my mom's slices were a lot thicker okay at least a quarter inch and maybe a little more versus culinary school where they're a lot lot thinner and i think the main reason for that is my mom did not own any really fancy sharp knives so maybe if she had she would have cut him a little bit thinner but there's no way to know and then what we'll do once our potato is sliced separate the pieces into the good the bad and the ugly and we'll put the bad and the ugly into one pile which is going to be that long piece we first sliced off plus any of the smaller end pieces and then we'll make a good pile featuring all the big beautiful perfect slices all right so good slices in one pile bad and ugly in the other and that's it i went ahead and did that to my other two potatoes and i should probably mention i'm trying to recreate a childhood experience here so i'm definitely slicing these thicker than i normally would but if you do want your thinner and more in the style of the classic technique the rest of this video will still work so you slice those in any thickness you want just as long as they're as consistent as you can get them and in case you're wondering the reason we're cutting it a little bit of an angle here is simply to produce a larger slice right that is just basic geometry and then once we have our potato sliced we will very generously butter a casserole dish and if you're keeping score at home this is exactly a two quart size and then once that's out we'll go ahead and place in our first layer of potato which will feature the slices from our bad and ugly pile and we will fit those hopefully in one layer the best we can and then once that first layer is placed in we will give this a very very generous sprinkling of salt followed by a much much lighter application of freshly ground black pepper and depending on your mood maybe a little bit of cayenne and what we'll do once we have that seasoned is scatter over a shockingly small amount of cheese in my case white sharp cheddar okay another major difference with my mom's version is that it was not nearly as rich as the classic french version okay here the cheese is not so much an ingredient as it is a seasoning so we're just gonna scatter over a relatively modest amount and then once our first layer is done using the bad and the ugly we can start on layer number two using potatoes from the good pile and i should mention if you do thicker slices you end up doing less cutting but they are possibly a little harder to place in since they're a little too big to overlap easily i know there's always a catch but that's fine part of the fun is you're kind of doing a jigsaw puzzle or spud saw puzzle if you prefer and then we'll go ahead and finish off that second layer exactly like the first with a very generous sprinkling of salt plus a little touch of pepper and cayenne and then finally our light scattering of cheese which by the way if you want to use more go ahead i mean you guys are after all the players of your layers and the mvps of your cheese but if you want to make it like mom you'll use a light hand and i'm not sure if she was just being frugal or just didn't want a lot of cheese all right it was probably the former but what i think was so exciting about rediscovering this dish is that it actually tastes like potatoes and not just like cream and cheese and as we finish this up depending on how many slices you have left if you have to do a little bit of overlapping on the top layer that's fine and maybe even an advantage since i think that makes for a really nice presentation once it's baked and in the spirit of full disclosure my mom did actually do one thing i'm not doing here and that is she dusted a little bit of flour between the layers which i assume she did to thicken the milk up but as you'll see with the final product i don't think it's necessary and i think we just get a little pure cleaner potato flavor without it but anyway we'll go ahead and finish up with our third and last layer assembled exactly the same as the first two except we won't top this with our cheese until we've poured in our milk and yes i said milk and not cream which other than the slice thickness was the biggest difference between the fancy french culinary school method and by the way i do suggest you use whole milk and not two percent or skim milk okay we do want a little bit of richness to it and of course if all you have is two percent you could always dot some pieces of butter between the layers to make up the difference but anyway once our milk has been slowly and carefully poured in and it's coming up almost but not quite to the very top of the potatoes we can go ahead and finish with the rest of our cheese and that's it once that's set we'll go ahead and take that and place it on a foil-lined sheet pan not only to catch potential drips but just to diffuse the heat a little bit so maybe cooks a little slower and a little more evenly at which point we can go ahead and transfer that into the center of a 400 degree oven for about an hour and 15 minutes or until bubbling and beautifully browned and hopefully looking like this and no matter how sure you are and how gorgeous it looks make sure you take a knife and test these potatoes to make sure they're perfectly tender and these were and that's it we should probably let it sit and rest for about 10 minutes before serving and then before i show you what i served it with i really need to go ahead and sneak a few bites and that my friends is pretty much exactly how i remembered okay until they actually invented time machine recipes is as close as we'll ever get but anyway this is my mom's minimalist version just basically potatoes and milk with a little bit of cheese salt and pepper and butter which is why unlike your typical classic french kraton this one actually tastes very much like potatoes or as a james beard award winner would say it is very potato forward but having said that if you want to be richer make it richer or i slice your potatoes thinner and use cream instead of milk and maybe more butter and more cheese but no matter what you use if you're going to sneak a few bites before bringing it to the table make sure you perform the whole push and patch to clean up the crime scene and hide all the evidence oh yeah there we go at which point i went ahead and served this with a beautiful braised beef short rib that may or may not be an upcoming video featuring what happens when you rub beef short ribs with korean chili paste and then braise them in hard apple cider and besides bringing back happy memories from my childhood the other great thing about this less decadent version is that it's perfect to serve with main courses like this which themselves are very rich and decadent and fatty and anxious but anyway that's it my attempt to make scale potatoes like my mom who by the way did not call it a scalloped potato graton she just called it scalp potatoes i'm adding the town to get some extra search engine love but no matter what you call this or how you adapt it i really do hope you give this a try soon so please follow the links below for the ingredient amounts a printable written recipe and much more info as usual and as always enjoy you

Channel: Food Wishes

Views: 262,857

Rating: 4.9685731 out of 5

Keywords: Scalloped, Potato, Gratin, recipe, side, dish, starch, chef, john, food, wishes, cooking

Id: HjmRF5r4pa4

Length: 7min 48sec (468 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 09 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/makakeza]

I'm sure they're better than Barb's, her scalloped potatoes are f*ckd!

Just kidding, looks great, will definitely make this!

[u/Unable-Description88]

They’re gonna be my next recipe I’ll try the next time I have roast beef.

[u/dont_disturb_the_cat]

Where did he get the anaerobic chamber he used to work with these potatoes so they didn’t get brown before they were cooked?