Boulangère Potatoes

We’re a big lover of dauphinoise potatoes in this house, but I thought I’d try out something a bit different on the boys to go with our Sunday roast.

I was reminded about Boulangère Potatoes when I was at Leiths. It’s the same principle as dauph potatoes, but instead of double cream and milk you use chicken stock.

Boulangère – baker in french – gives its name to this potato dish because after the bakers had finished baking their bread for the day, the locals would take their pot of potatoes to bake in their ovens as they cooled down.

I remembered being blown away by how tasty the dish was when I first tried it, so I’m attempting to recreate it at home…

Boulangère Potatoes (Leiths Cookery Bible)
Serves 4

45g butter
675g floury potatoes, very thinly sliced (maris piper or king edward)
1 small onion, very thinly sliced
salt and freshly ground black pepper
200ml chicken stock

1. Preheat oven to 170’C
2. Butter a pie dish and arrange the potatoes in layers with the onion, adding a little salt and pepper as you go.
3. Arrange the top layer of potatoes in overlapping slices.
4. dot with the remaining butter and pour in the stock. Press the potatoes down firmly – they should be compeltely submerged in stock.
5. Bake for about 2 hours, or until the potatoes are tender and the top browned. Keep checking them and if they’re not completely submerged in stock after 30 mins top up with water. After an hour it should be evaporating and jellifying.

Tip: To get the restaurant look you can stamp out discs of the potatoes with a large pastry cutter. If you’re going to do this put a layer of greaseproof paper over the potatoes once they’re out of the oven and put a roasting dish with some weights in it on the top to compress the layers. Then stamp out your circles, put them onto a baking sheet and reheat in oven for 15 minutes at 190’C.

I ended up using a lot more stock than listed in the recipe to fully submerge the potatoes. This was an error though coz the liquid never properly evaporated. I’ll be a bit more conservative next time and try to press the potatoes down more.

I really need to buy a mandolin as it took ages to slice the potatoes.

However it was still a really tasty part of my roast dinner. I didn’t feel the need to make gravy or any other trimmings. An uncomplicated plate of meat, veg and potatoes is sometimes just what you crave.