The other day my daughter was cruising around Pinterest looking at interesting food prep ideas as kids do these days when she came across a video of a guy making Fondant Potatoes.
The sort of irreverent way that he narrated the video intrigued her so she watched it and then asked me to watch it with her.
And then “the ask”. Can we make this? Of course I said “Sure”.
We trimmed up the Russet potatoes as described in the video – even though it probably would have been easier to use a potato peeler – she said, let’s do it the right way!
We cut them to approximately equal sized chunks and then let them soak in a water bath fora few minutes
Then comes one of the most important steps – dry them off with a paper towel. Really carefully.
It is important to carefully dry them because they are going to be placed in a skillet of hot oil and you know, oil and water, especially water and hot oil don’t mix. At least not nicely.
And then as I said above, the potato chunks get placed in the pre-heated cast iron skillet. Seriously – be careful at this stage because this is the splatter zone of hot oil.
In the video he said it can take 5-6 minutes to brown the first side/end of the potato. It seemed quicker to us. Once the first end was browned, we used tongs to flip them upside down and let the other end brown.
This is where it gets a bit tricky – you want to get the oil out of the pan and replace it with a big chunk of butter. Again using the tongs, we patted up the oil with scrunched up paper towels until most of the oil was gone.
We reduced the heat under the pan to medium, let the butter melt and then using stalks of thyme we dabbed the butter on top of the chunks of potato.
Then the part of the recipe where it gets it’s actual name – we poured a cup of chicken stock into the pan before firing it all into the oven preheated to 350 degrees.
What do I mean about this is where the recipe gets it’s name? Apparently Fondant means “baked in stock”. That’s why I say that is how and why they are called Fondant Potatoes.
The video said to bake the potatoes in the broth for 20 minutes but ours were still too firm after 20 minutes so we added another half cup of stock and put them back in the oven for another ten minutes.
The single hardest of this recipe? Waiting until they were cool enough to eat.
Once we could slice and then bite into them, they were amazing. They had a rich and creamy texture and the butter infused with thyme created a wonderful “gravy” that we spooned over top of the potatoes on our plates.
And the verdict from the kids? “Let’s do this again!” Yes, BOTH kids liked them and ate them.