Potatoes Au Gratin – Spoon Fork Bacon

Potatoes Au Gratin (or au gratin potatoes) is a dish that you can have anytime of the year, although our favorite time to enjoy them is during the fall and winter. They make a perfect side dish with just about anything and are especially great to serve to a larger group of people.

Whenever I make these potatoes, they’re always the first thing to disappear, so I’d say it’s a pretty good sign. The potatoes are tender, creamy and soak up all the delicious garlic and cheese flavors and it’s finished with a crisp, golden, bubbling top!

What is an Au Gratin?

An au gratin is a traditional French technique that is comprised of a dish topped with cheese, butter, breadcrumbs, or a combination of the three and baked and/or broiled to form a browned and crisp top. The most commonly known gratin dish is a potatoes au gratin, although many different things can be made into a gratin.

How to Make Our Potatoes Au Gratin?

Ingredients

Process

1. Preheat oven to 375˚F. Grease a casserole dish.
2. Very thinly slice potatoes – using a mandoline, if you have one, helps tremendously.

3. Combine cream, shredded cheddar, Parmesan, and garlic. Stir together.
4. Add sliced potatoes and toss together. Season with salt and pepper and toss together.

5. Take a stack of potatoes and line baking dish, keeping potatoes upright on a slight angle. Repeat until all potatoes have been used.
6. Pour excess cream mixture over potatoes and season with salt and pepper.

7. Dot top with remaining butter.
8. Cover baking dish with foil and bake.

9. Remove from oven, uncover potatoes.
10. Sprinkle top with Parmesan.

11. Continue to bake until potatoes are fork tender and top has crisped. Transfer to broiler and broil on high for 1 minute, until top has browned. Remove from oven, cool slightly and serve.

Tools You Will Need

Why This is the BEST Potatoes Au Gratin You Will Ever Have

We know it’s a bold statement to make, but we truly believe our recipe is the most delicious au gratin you will ever taste!

• We don’t layer the sliced potatoes atop one another. Instead we stack them vertically in rows. We think they cook more evenly this way and each and every slice of potato gets nice and crispy on top.
• The minced garlic makes a huge difference in flavor!
• We use heavy cream! A lot of recipes we’ve see use whole milk, which definitely works fine, but using heavy cream really pushes this dish over the top in decadence and you can be sure that you wont have a watery base once the dish is baked, but instead a nice creamy sauce.
• We use white cheddar AND Parmesan cheese. Most recipes use just Parmesan cheese, but we also throw in some white cheddar cheese, making this au gratin extra cheesy, creamy and delicious.

Russet Potatoes or Yukon Golds for Potatoes Au Gratin?

Either potatoes will actually work great for this recipe. We use russet potatoes because they bake very well. Russets also absorb liquid better than their waxy counterparts, so they will soak up all the delicious flavors and still maintain their structure. Both types of potatoes have a high starch content which will help to thicken the sauce.

I would just avoid using something like a waxy red skinned potato because they contain less starch and will likely still be firm even after they’re baked.

Tips and Tricks for Potatoes Au Gratin Success

• The heavy cream should coat all the potatoes evenly to ensure they don’t dry out.
• Covering this dish in foil in beginning of the baking process will allow the potatoes to soften without drying the dish out. Once the potatoes get to a good point, uncovering them will allow the top of the gratin to brown and crisp up, while allowing some of the excess liquid to thicken and evaporate.
• Keeping the slices as uniform in thickness as possible will greatly help even cooking throughout the gratin.
• Using a mandoline will not only ensure even thickness, but will also reduce the prep time. If you don’t have a a very sharp knife is the next best thing we recommend.
• I don’t recommend soaking the potatoes in water ahead of time for our potatoes au gratin (as some recipes call for). Soaking them will cause them to lose some of their starch, which helps to keep this dish creamy. The dish will still get a nice, crisp top without soaking the potatoes.

Variations for Our Potatoes Au Gratin

• Replace the cheddar cheese with shredded gruyere cheese, comté or fontina. Also replace the Parmesan cheese with Pecorino.
• For a more savory garlic flavor, you can roast a few cloves of garlic ahead of time and mash them into the cream mixture before tossing the potatoes and pouring over the dish.
• Swap the heavy cream out with whole milk; although the mixture won’t get quite as thick and creamy if using milk.
• Instead of thyme, use different herbs(or in combination with thyme). Chives, green onion and rosemary are all great alternatives.
• Toss some diced ham or crumbled bacon into the potato and cream mixture!

I love this crazy delicious, creamy, and comforting cheesy potatoes au gratin. It’s the perfect carb-y side dish to enjoy all season long.

Make Ahead Instructions

Tightly wrap the dish in foil and refrigerate up to 24 hours ahead of time. When ready to bake, just place the covered gratin in the oven, adding about an extra 5-7 minutes of baking time to the dish (covered).

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