Preparing to Cook a Potatoes Au Gratin Recipe

Part of the Video Series How to Cook Vegetables

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Learn how to prepare potatoes au gratin from our expert in this free how-to video on cooking with vegetables and healthy recipes.

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Preparing to Cook a Potatoes Au Gratin Recipe
Hi! I'm Louis Ortiz on behalf of Expert Village and today we are going to show you a basic procedure for potatoes au gratin. The cooking procedure and definition of that usually means that the dish that is being baked in the oven or under a broiler has bread crumbs and cheese on the top of it which are caramelized and kind of a nice crusty crunchy golden brown color. So today I am going to show you, we are just going to do a small amount of potatoes au gratin and I've got a small little tin that we are going to use; just a little small love tin. What I've got here is called the mandolin slicer. These can be a little dangerous so you want to make sure that the foundation that you are cutting on is nice and stable as well as the mandolin itself is nice and stable. This is a handle that you can use to use smaller vegetables so that you can run it across. What happens is I've got a blade here that is ready to cut obviously and you lower this ramp on which angle that you need based on the thickness of potato or whatever it is that you are cutting. What I am going for here and I've already done a few test cuts to know that this is the thickness that I am going to want. It's a potato about this thick. What we are going to do is layer these potatoes and between each layer we are going to place some good things like cream and cheese and clarified butter and make them real nice and tasty. So any who, that's the thickness that we are going for. I've got a Idaho Russet Potato here that I've already peeled and again, I've already made a couple of test cuts and I made a foot on this so that I will have a nice even pattern to use. All you do is just slide this potato down keeping it level and I've got my left hand underneath here to catch the potato slices as we go along. I'm going to cut these, just a nice smooth motion, not putting a whole lot of pressure on there just because it doesn't need it. It is a very sharp blade that I am cutting on. We've got a nice little pile of potatoes going here. I'll just keep going down the length of the board and the length of the potato actually. Just be careful as you get further down that your finger tips don't get close to the blade, the cutting surface because it will leave a nasty mark. Kind of puts a damper on dinner when that happens. All right, so we are about done with this potato Again this will work for all kinds of vegetables this mandolin tool. It's a great thing and there are all kinds of replacement blades that you can put in place of the one that I am using so you can get very decorative cuts for party platters and things of that nature. So I've finished this and I will go ahead and drop the potato slices into a bowl of water and we will move on the second part of the procedure and I will tell you how to get this ready for the oven.

About the Expert

Expert: Louis Ortiz is a professional chef instructor at a culinary institute. He has been working in the culinary industry for 10 years. Read More