France and the Alps · Volume 15, Sauce, the Brigade and the Bistro Underneath
Hachis parmentier
Paris
An illustration of the dish, not a photograph of it cooked.
- Time
- 1 hour
- Researched
- 14 sources cited
- Reviewed
- Not yet reviewed from inside the tradition
- Cooked
- Not yet cooked and reported
Hachis parmentier's functional origin is economic: it exists specifically to use up leftover meat from a roast or from pot-au-feu, a cheap family staple before it was ever a menu item.
As tradition built it
Serves 4. About 1 hour.
Ingredients
- 600 g leftover cooked beef (or fresh braising beef, cooked down), shredded
- 1 onion, finely chopped
- 30 g butter
- 1 kg floury potatoes
- 100 g butter, for the mash
- 100 ml milk or cream
- 50 g grated Gruyère, for the top
Method
- Soften the onion in butter, add the shredded beef and warm through, seasoning well.
- Boil the potatoes until tender, then mash thoroughly with the butter and milk until smooth.
- Layer the meat in a dish, top with the mash, scatter with the grated Gruyère, and bake at 200°C for 25 to 30 minutes, until golden on top.
What a modern chef changes
A confit-style filling, and a purée pushed to restaurant smoothness
Rung 3
Method
- Cook the beef, or beef cheek, in the manner of a confit rather than a braise, sealed in fat and held at 80°C for several hours, for a texture that shreds far more evenly than a stovetop braise.
- Pass the potato purée through a fine sieve, or blitz briefly in a high-power blender, working in the butter cold rather than warm, after the classical logic of a Robuchon-style pommes purée, an extremely high butter-to-potato ratio and total smoothness rather than a rustic mash.
- Dehydrate a fine layer of potato slices to a genuine crisp and shatter it over the top in place of the melted-cheese crust, for a textural contrast the traditional bake does not offer.