Would you say it was… a hassle?
Yes, yes I would.
“YYYEEAAAHHH!”
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It was tasty, I just thought it did not produce sufficient flavor for what I expected with all that extra surface area.
I feel like simply parboiling quartered potatoes and roasting them with beef fat is a little bit better “return on investment”.
I enjoyed making it. I love trying different things even if they aren’t what I hope.
What type of potato did you use? I find the startchier varieties work best. When oiled meticulously they get crispy everywhere.
Mind you, I find them a hassle too.
Edit, I had to remove this comment and stop commenting because I’m getting too wound up about cooking lol
I respect that! Anyway, the dish looked delicious ☺️
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I tried this too and was similarly unimpressed! Good, but not amazing.
IMO the best flavour to work ratio for potatoes is to cube them and toss them into an Actifry with either beef fat or coconut oil and salt. Get a ton of crispy surface with about 5 minutes of active work, including cleanup.
Mashed is also super easy despite the above comment and is probably my go-to way to eat potatoes. Cube, pressure cook 7 min, mash with milk and butter. And I grow a ton of potatoes so I eat them almost every day 😁
Apples & oranges, to be fair. You can’t compare a cream process with a simple fat process, especially when the latter is a minimalist approach and the former is recognized almost solely by its presentation. All due respect, but the critique sounds more like a preference, underneath. I hope you try this recipe again and pull from the constructive advice elsewhere in this thread. Good luck! Have fun!
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How is doing…that…to a potato less work than cutting a few into large chunks, boiling in salt water, then mashing with some butter, milk, salt, pepper, garlic, and sour cream?
I feel like in terms of strict effort, doing the slicing on one potato, not even counting the cooking, is more of a bother than the entire process of making a big batch of mashed potatoes.
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So I guess you ain’t no hassleback girl, you ain’t no hassleback girl!
Can get the same crispiness just using a mandolin to completely slice it up. Leaving it connected makes little sense, considering how much more effort it takes cutting it by hand.
I would never make this again.
I mean, I could tell based on my understanding of physics and cooking that it was not going to turn out as one would hope.
But I plowed through and made it anyways. In the end, every single concern I had about this preparation rang true.
I knew going in that it couldn’t possibly cook consistently because the bottom would be a solid mass and the top would be split apart with varying gaps.
I knew that convection would not carry the moisture away from the bottom of the fins but it would desiccate the tops properly. I felt that the tops 1/3 would have crispy delicious skins but the base would have tough leather. I was right.
I knew that both ends would be rock hard and inedible but it had to be that way in order for the thicker parts to absorb enough heat.
I knew that applying an oil to the top was a very delicate game because it would just saturate into a grease pool if it dripped/pooled to the lower part.
I feel like this is a misbegotten recipe. A big series of fanciful ideas that are visually impressive but do not deliver in the taste department. Seems like it’s from a time before cooking science was well understood.
Maybe next time you could try lower heat for longer. Or not, if this is not for you, you do you.
Physics prevents this from being cooked anything other than inconsistently.
As the fins rise and spread out, the amount of moisture that can dissipate can be plotted on a curve with the bottom of the potato always representing the least amount of moisture dissipation, and the outer part at the top always having the most.
And it gets more complicated because as the potato curves on each axis it becomes thinner on the edges so there’s a gradient in moisture dissipation there too.
In a practical sense this means that every X, Y, Z point on this potato is cooked different. Some points will be perfect but by definition it means other points will not and cannot be perfect. And other points must be awful.
There is a fundamental flaw in this design, which changing the temperature or cooking duration cannot solve.
Too much delta t leads to too much delta T.
I wonder if the tater could be sous vide after slicing to perfect temp and then somehow flash crusted. Similar idea to twice cooked fries that are boiled, frozen, then fried.
To get a more consistently cooked product, I think the geometry of the surface would need to change or we would need to use a cooking device that could deliver a different amounts of heat energy to different points.
Go for it, let me know how it turns out!
Id wrap the top half in foil, cook it upside down for 50-75% of the cook time, then flip rightside up and take the foil off to finish.
I mean, I’ve had this prepared professionally and it was exceptional and consistent. And I knew immediately I probably didn’t ever want to prepare it myself.
So its a skill issue. Check.
Sometimes I think the highest regarded dishes are about the way they look rather than the process, execution, or the taste. The more I learn to cook, the more I appreciate the nuance of each step!
This is only related because it’s for the rich, but I was watching a show the other day and apparently there exists a £21,000 TACO.
It didn’t even look good tbh.
Mandolin and a skewer to keep them togehther-ish in the oven.
it’s how I keep onion rings together while grilling them. (actually, i use poultry dressing scewers for that. they’re the perfect size. Tab them through the layers, then slice between them. Marinade in salt, vinegar and olive oil. Grill on high till… uh… grilled.)
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Gourmet potato chips
Gourmet potato chips
Yet without the key prep-work that makes good chips and french fries taste so great. In other words, standard-recipe Hassleback doesn’t include the classic 2-3 steps of getting the starch out via cold water baths before cooking. Do that, and I bet this tastes worlds better.
This would also work well in an air-fryer, I think. You’d brush lightly with oil of choice, cooking a few minutes, turn upside down, re-brush and re-cook until eventually done to preference. That way you’d get a nice even bake.
I do something similar with spiralised potatoes, and they taste great. The cold-water baths are certainly some extra work, but if you do several taters at once I think it works out pretty well.
I made a ton of them while learning knife skills. They are way too much work versus tastier options, but they look pretty.
Puts the hassle in Hassleback.
It’s not that difficult to do, just requires some knife skills and not rushing. But I never liked the finished results. It’s crispy on the outside and mushy on the inside.
I always liked this method. It’s crispy on the outside and mushy on the inside.
I respect that some people have different opinions on the same thing.
I don’t.
I think everybody should have the same opinion.I agree with this, and so should everybody else.
I don’t agree with this. No one else should either.
This is quite literally the same thing I made for dinner tonight as well. I’m sorry you struggled with the potatoes. Even with chopsticks it can be a little challenging. A very sharp knife makes all the difference.
There was no struggling, and they turned out perfect, they just were not worth the effort invested for the flavor return.
What dish is the most worth the effort?
I think in a general sense most dishes are worth the effort!
When I use that expression here, I mean that I feel that I can develop substantially better flavor using much simpler methods that take less time, less cleanup, less cooking, more agreeable/consistent texture, and so forth.
I was a little bit dubious of the hype I read surrounding this particular preparation, and I feel that in the end that skepticism was justified.
Maybe not the absolutely most, but in strict terms of “tastiness divided by work”, I have made crock pot pork chops that have got to be in the top 5% for that ratio.
Basically get small boneless pork chops when they’re on sale, and put however many you want (I usually do 4-6) in the crock pot with two cans of Cream of Chicken soup and a packet of dry ranch seasoning.
Stir that shit all together and turn it on low, then go to work.
When you get home enjoy your delicious, savory, juicy pork chops.
Really the only way you can get lower effort than that is something that’s pre-made (like a boxed oven meal or something that is microwaved) or something that requires no prep at all, like just eating an apple or something.
Did you freehand the cuts or use the chopsticks/skewers assisted method?
Not op, but they definitely used laser eyebeams. You can tell from the precision and crispy edges that they shot laser beams from their eyeballs. Final answer, Regis.
Looking at the spacing bw the cuts I would also add that it is most likely op has 6 eyes from which they shoot laserbeams.
8 OP is from Arachnia
Been a home cook for a long time and I make everything from scratch so thank you very much for that :)
Yes freehand cuts. I think it’s just doing it a million preps, my tools are el cheapo $5 German steel knives and I use a metal wheel quick sharpener and a pro hone. I’m a bit of a sinner lol
I don’t have time to fuss, and I’ll just throw out my knife and get a new one every 3 years
I remember my mom trying to make Hasslback potatoes.
It turned out not well. (No cream, her knife skills are… well lets just say 1/2 was as thin as they got. oh. and did i mention no cream?)
Are you thinking about scalloped potatoes? Hasselback with cream is news to me.
They need something on top.
Personally I love adding shredded cheddar for the last bit so it gets baked on, sour cream and chives.
Yeah, thanks for the perfect place to put my comment - I’ve also been underwhelmed by hassleback but mostly on how do you get your butter/oil/spices between all the layers? Until you come them, and even after, the slices have been too brittle to bend apart without breaking
Maybe sour cream and toppings can be added after cooking, but butter or oil kind of need to be there for cooking
