SV Mashed Potatoes

[Saucier]

Sous Vide Mashed Potatoes with Garlic and Rosemary

2 lbs. Russet potatoes 5 cloves garlic 3 sprigs rosemary 8 ounces unsalted butter 1 cup whole milk 2 teaspoons kosher salt

Smooth, buttery, and subtly laced with garlic and rosemary, these dreamy mashed potatoes bring the humble potato to new levels. Set your sous vide to 194 F / 90 C. Rinse and peel the potatoes. Thinly slice them into 1/8-inch pieces. Smash and peel the garlic cloves. Seal the potatoes, garlic, rosemary, butter, milk, and salt into a zip or vacuum seal bag (I set my vacuum sealer to 25 seconds) and cook until the potatoes are tender, about 1.5 hours. Open the bag and pour the liquid through a sieve into a small bowl (reserve for later). Discard the rosemary. Empty the potatoes into a large bowl and mash them. If you have a potato ricer or food mill, now’s a great time to use it. If you want a really over-the-top, super smooth texture, pass the mashed potatoes through a tamis, chinois, or sieve, using a plastic bench scraper. Whatever you do, DO NOT use a food processor, electric mixer, or blender – due to the starch in the potatoes, if you over mix the potatoes you’ll end up with a gluey texture. Gently whisk the melted butter and milk (reserved from before) back into the mashed potatoes to get a smooth and creamy texture.  Second try…. 2 lbs russets (after peeling) 1/2 cup coconut milk, 2 TBL ghee, 8 cloves garlic minced, 1 tsp table salt, a few grinds of black pepper

Servings: -- Yield: 2 quarts NOTE the original recipe called for a LOT of butter..  Was overwhelming to me, so as noted, next time I switched it up a bit and was much happier

[Tyrus]

👍👍

[tony b]

The velvet potatoes at the French Laundry use an insane amount of butter! And definitely run them through a ricer/food mill/chinois. Don't be shy with the butter - you'll be rewarded with amazing mash potatoes that you would never dream of drowning in gravy! 

[tekobo]

10 hours ago, tony b said:

The velvet potatoes at the French Laundry use an insane amount of butter! And definitely run them through a ricer/food mill/chinois. Don't be shy with the butter - you'll be rewarded with amazing mash potatoes that you would never dream of drowning in gravy! 

I may never make it to the French Laundry but I have had "mashed" potatoes at the Joel Robuchon restaurant in London.  Yes, so silky and with what appeared to be 60% butter content.  It's probably a good thing for my heart that I have never managed to reproduce the effect at home.

[Bruce Pearson]

The French Laundry? Is that located in California? Oooops I just answered my own question. Anybody been there is it expensive and is the food good? Any comments will be appreciated

[Pequod]

28 minutes ago, Bruce Pearson said:

The French Laundry? Is that located in California? Oooops I just answered my own question. Anybody been there is it expensive and is the food good? Any comments will be appreciated

Yountville, CA. It’s a legendary Thomas Keller restaurant with a prix fixe menu. Be ready to drop at least $100 per person...and that’s just the first course. 😲

[Tyrus]

3 hours ago, Bruce Pearson said:

Any comments will be appreciated

I don't know about you but I may have to leave this one off my to do list..........it doesn't have a bar

[tony b]

Never gotten a reservation there = booked months in advance. Pequod ain't joking, be prepared to drop many Franklins per person on the full tasting dinner, plus your wine tab.

[jonj]

We tried to get a reservation there a few years ago and the reservation list then was greater than six months out. Which didn't mean you actually could get a reservation in six months. It meant you could call and attempt to obtain a reservation sometime beyond six months in the future. 

[Pequod]

Those must be some really special mashed taters.

[tony b]

Similar to @Saucier post, here's Cook's Illustrated simplified method of making the "pommes purée." 

https://www.cooksillustrated.com/recipes/9246-french-style-mashed-potatoes-pommes-puree 

Plus, if you cook the spuds in the sous vide with the butter and milk, as noted in this thread, it's even easier. 

[MacKenzie]

Tony, you need a membership to see the recipe.

 

[Pequod]

27 minutes ago, MacKenzie said:

Tony, you need a membership to see the recipe.

 

Those taters just get more and more special...  Six month reservations. Paywall just to see a copycat recipe. 😲

[tony b]

Sorry, everyone's seems to be in it for the $$ these days!

I've attached the recipe. 

Pommes Puree - Cook's Illustrated.pdf

[Noble dogs]

On 2/26/2020 at 1:20 AM, Saucier said:

Set your sous vide to 194 F / 90 C. Rinse and peel the potatoes. Thinly slice them into 1/8-inch pieces. Smash and peel the garlic cloves. Seal the potatoes, garlic, rosemary, butter, milk, and salt into a zip or vacuum seal bag (I set my vacuum sealer to 25 seconds) and cook until the potatoes are tender, about 1.5 hours. Open the bag and pour the liquid through a sieve into a small bowl (reserve for later). Discard the rosemary.

I've just started dive into non-meat SV recepies. This one is next on my list.

Edited May 7, 2020 by Noble dogs

[Syzygies]

On 2/26/2020 at 10:05 AM, Pequod said:

Yountville, CA. It’s a legendary Thomas Keller restaurant with a prix fixe menu. Be ready to drop at least $100 per person...and that’s just the first course. 😲

 

On 2/27/2020 at 7:58 AM, jonj said:

We tried to get a reservation there a few years ago and the reservation list then was greater than six months out. Which didn't mean you actually could get a reservation in six months. It meant you could call and attempt to obtain a reservation sometime beyond six months in the future. 

Haven't eaten there, but I was the "dumb end of the board" helping my woodworker neighbor install a fancy shed for extra storage, before their remodel. Thomas Keller pays attention to detail, I got to meet him twice. I mentioned using his sous vide cookbook, and he didn't look surprised at all. He later asked about the roof color, and I suggested no, it should match on Google Earth. That elicited a bit of surprise.

The veggies being dropped off were mind-boggling.

Our favorite sous vide vegetable is also potatoes. I've sold friends on sous vide this way, that feel they have meat otherwise mastered: Peel and quarter (or to size) potatoes, vacuum pack, and cook sous vide at 185 F or above (this is the threshold for most vegetables to actually cook) for one to two hours (to taste, revisit this on subsequent trials). Chill the packs completely, ideally overnight, or in ice water if in a hurry. A few hours before cooking, open the packs and spread out the potatoes on a cooling rack, with a fan blowing on them, to dry off as much surface moisture as possible. (A brief time in a dehydrator would also work, but that's more cleanup.) To serve, fry hard in ghee, with salt and pepper to taste, till they pick up lots of color and cook completely through.

Twice-cooked starch is transcendent. That's the whole idea behind french fries done right. This is a riff on that.

Thomas Keller discourages sous vide for most vegetables. I don't make complete dishes from his first cookbook, The French Laundry, but there are some amazing techniques in there. For example, cooking lobster just long enough to remove and reserve the meat, then using the shells for stock, then gently cooking the meat in mostly butter, some water (which translates well to sous vide). I've used this to top a gumbo to die for. His favorite vegetable technique is "big pot boiling". I mean big, like a 16 quart pot. (There is online debate on how big is necessary. Diminishing returns, of course, but people are revealing that they can't tell the difference, not that you can't. It's not easy to cook beyond one's perceptions; I'm convinced Keller is a super-taster.) Nearly fill with water salted to sea water (decide to taste), bring to hard boil, and plunge vegetables to cook exactly to taste. Plunge next into ice water to arrest cooking. This preserves flavor and color, which matters at his prices. If you save tomato harvests as we do by skinning, partially dehydrating with salt till "gooshy", and freezing, then adding those tomatoes to Blue Lake green beans cooked big pot boiling and dressed with your favorite vinaigrette makes the best green bean salad I've ever made. I've brought this as a vegetable side to Thanksgiving by very serious cooks; this is the only "pot luck" veggie course I know that can break through the cacophony of other dishes.

Edited May 7, 2020 by Syzygies

[tony b]

On 5/7/2020 at 5:13 AM, Noble dogs said:

I've just started dive into non-meat SV recepies. This one is next on my list.

A good start. Also do poached eggs using the SV. This one is a bit trickier, as it's not forgiving at all on the cooking time. I'm talking down to the quarter minute! 167F bath, eggs straight from the fridge, 11.25 minutes, then immediately into an ice bath for 1 minute. Perfectly set white (the liquidy part will cling to the shell, so you only get the "good part" of the white) and a yolk that's just runny. Go to 12 mins if you want to set the yolk more to a jelly like consistency. Play with the time until you get them exactly how you like them.