Saturday July 23, 2016 – After I posted my knife skills practice blog post, my friend Charles suggested I make Hasselback potatoes. Because, hey, potatoes are delicious, and slicing up some more is an excuse to eat more potatoes.
Strictly speaking, you don’t need a recipe to make Hasselback potatoes. Just slice the potato into thin slices most of the way through, coat with some kind of fat (butter or olive oil), season with salt and pepper, and top with whatever else you want, and bake for about an hour. But given that this was my first time, I decided to follow a recipe anyway. (That’s just how I’m wired.)
I ended up going with an AllRecipes recipe (which is, incidentally, the first Google hit for “Hasselback potatoes”). I really liked the look breadcrumbs, so this recipe was a shoo-in.
The recipe doesn’t specify what kind of potato, but baking potatoes are, for some reason, always russets, so I went with russets. The recipe also says to get 4 8oz potatoes, but the only russets I could find were in the 14oz range, so I just got two of those. The recipe also says to peel the potatoes, but why? Potato skins are edible, add flavor, and I was too lazy to peel them anyway.
For slicing the potatoes, a common trick is to put the potatoes against a wooden spoon or a pair of chopsticks. This acts as a stopper, which makes it really easy to cut your potatoes consistently and prevents you from cutting all the way through. Another trick is to cut the potato from the center going out to the ends. Otherwise, if you start at the ends, you might accidentally slice the ends right off. Also, slice the potatoes as thin as your comfortable with, only just thick enough to stay rigid. (Yes, I know some people who can slice potatoes paper thin. I’m not one of them.)
The potato slices will stick together. (Probably because of capillary action. I couldn’t actually find any info on it.) Don’t worry about it. The potato will fan out on its own during baking.
The recipe calls for drizzling the butter into the potato. I went with brushing. I used a pastry brush to get melted butter all over the outside of the potato as well as a little bit between each slice. I also used half a stick instead of 2 Tbsp, because butter!
Lastly, I couldn’t find romano, so I used parmesan instead. As long as you don’t overbake the cheese, it’ll be fine.
Overall, the potatoes turned out well. It was like eating fries, except with a nice potatoey center. That said, I personally prefer the potatoes au gratin though, from a culinary perspective and for the creamy flavor. That said, Hasselback potatoes do look cool as an edible centerpiece for a small party though. Definitely a dish worth having in my wheelhouse.