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Potato, it seems like a simple, somewhat humble vegetable meant only as a side, a quiet support for the other ingredients on the plate. It may be true but potato done right, potato mashed perfectly with tasty butter and warm milk, chips boiled, dried, fried, dried and fried - well, those are the best chips in the world.
We’ve decided to take a closer look at potato and just how some of the world’s best chefs use the versatile vegetable. Like the divine "hot potato, cold potato" dish served by Grant Achatz at Alinea (pictured below) which places texture, flavour and temperature together in a world of rich, buttery truffle goodness.
Michelin-Starred Chips
Chips - triple cooked chips in this case - are one of those foods that people underestimate. Simply cutting and then frying a potato can taste great but getting down to details and really understanding how to make a great chip takes a lot of practice.
A lot of practice that has already been perfected by chef Heston Blumenthal - the man credited with the surge of triple cooked chips we now see across almost every gastro-pub menu in the UK. A good chip is tasty, a triple cooked chip is a whole new world. It involves boiling, drying and frying a number of times and takes a 15 minutes recipe and turns into more like 4 hours, but trust us on this, it’s entirely worth the effort.
For the U.S. peeps, this video should work, the first 5-6 minutes cover the chips.
Michelin Chefs Cook Mashed Potatoes
There’s another Heston trick for mashed potato which involves roasting the veg instead of boiling but for our mash we prefer to hit up our friends at ChefSteps with their simple video recipe for pomme purée. Watch it here:
Michelin Starred Roasted Potatoes
It’s hard to avoid Blumenthal when it comes to the potato because the chef covered the ingredient during his Search for Perfection television series. Another video worth checking out from that series is the chef’s tip for the perfect roast potatoes which you will find below:
Gordon Ramsay's Fondant Potatoes
You may have had the pleasure of eating a great fondant potato in a restaurant. They taste great but sound like a difficult thing to make, mainly because of that French sounding name, but they’re not - we promise.
Here’s Gordon Ramsay cooking a fondant potatoes - simple and so delicious.
Michelin Recipes: Potato Noodles
Stepping away from convention, here’s a nice video from The Staff Canteen which shows the Portuguese chef Nuno Mendes as he cooks up potato noodles.
That should be enough to keep you going but if not, we’ve also got some nice tips on peeling a potato and the unlikely story of a UK food factory that’s actually powered by waste mashed potatoes.
