These Dauphinoise Potatoes are the softest, creamiest, cheesy-ist, most delicious side dish…and even better, they look fancy but are super easy to make! With only 5 ingredients that you can find at any grocery store, they are an accessible but luxury side that will elevate any dinner.
My take on dauphinoise potatoes is more of a modern version. It is essentially the same but with more cheese and an altered cream/milk/garlic ratio. Traditionally a dauphinoise potato dish would have layers of potatoes and the cream mixture and have the gruyere only on top (and purists will tell you that there is no cheese involved at all). In this house however, we love cheese so…once we got the cream/milk/garlic ratio that we preferred we had to go with our hearts and sprinkled a healthy amount of gruyere in between each layer. Which was absolutely a great decision.
Additionally we left out the dash or so of cloves that sometimes appears in recipes for this dish; we tried it and yes it adds a little more seasoning and tastes good, but it made the dish less universal in our opinion. Definitely try it if you want to!
Let’s jump on in, I hope you like it as much as we do!
TLDR: Recipe is below the pictures 🙂
Some tips/pictures for reference before we get started:
Only 5 ingredients! Everything you see here is all you need for this recipe. The gruyere pictured here can be found at Costco, but really, any type of gruyere will work for this. I just go to Costco a lot so I usually grab this while I’m there.
This is how thin your potatoes should be, or at least close to this. See how you can see through them when they are layered? Very very thin. Thicker is ok too, but the dish won’t have that same “lightness” that we are looking for in the dish. There is already a lot of cream, so thinner potatoes helps keep it from feeling too heavy.
I use a mandolin, but a sturdy sharp knife will work really well here too if you go slowly. I cannot stress this enough to literally everyone: if you are using a mandolin go slower than you think you can. You WILL cut yourself if you are not extremely careful. Ask me how I know. It hurts. Definitely use a cut glove if you have one, I love mine. They can usually just be thrown in the wash when you’re done and they’re pretty cheap. I absolutely recommend everyone have one.
Below is how the potatoes should look in the cream/milk/garlic mixture. For me, I used 6 large gold potatoes. You may want to increase the amount of potatoes you use if you are using smaller potatoes, so that your potatoes to mixture ratio looks like this in the Dutch oven.
This is how the layers are constructed in order: potatoes, cheese, cream mixture. Repeat this multiple times until you get to the end of your potato slices. You can see that for the last layer, the cheese is on top of the cream mixture. That way you get dauphinoise potatoes that have a gorgeous golden cheese layer!
Depending on how high you want your potatoes to stack, you can use a 9×13, an 8×8, or even a large enameled cast iron. With a larger dish you will have less layers than if you use a smaller one. Both ways are great! You can absolutely make it in a larger dish and then cut pieces and stack them like you see in my finished pictures at the top and bottom of the page. It can make for fun presentation that way! For less work, you can just scoop the potatoes on the plate to serve, I do that too! It just depends on my mood which one I choose to do.
Details
6
10
60
375 F
Print
Ingredients
3 Cups Heavy Whipping Cream
2 Cups Whole Milk
1 Large Clove of Garlic – Minced
6-8 Large Gold Potatoes
3 Cups Gruyere Cheese
Directions
- Pre-heat your oven to 375 F.
- Use a mandolin or sharp knife *carefully – preferably with a cut glove* to cut the potatoes into thin slices.
- Over medium-low heat, bring the heavy whipping cream, milk, and garlic to a simmer. Don’t raise the heat above medium or you will burn the milk and cream. Go slowly.
- Add the sliced potatoes to the cream mixture, bring it up to a boil, then immediately drop heat to medium/medium-low. Simmer for 3 to 5 minutes until just barely cooked. They will cook more in the oven. Stir every now and then so they don’t stick to the bottom of the Dutch oven or each other.
- You’re going to use a spoon with slots or tongs to remove potatoes and layer them in an oven-proof dish. How to layer:
-layer of potatoes
-layer of gruyere
-pour some of the cream mixture on top
-repeat until you’re out of potatoes - Once you are out of potatoes reverse the order of layering. Do the last layer of potatoes, pour enough of the cream mixture to barely cover the top of them, then top with the remaining gruyere. If you want to add more cheese here, go for it!
- Bake for 40-50 minutes in your pre-heated oven until golden brown on top and the cheese is bubbly. Serve either by spooning onto the plate immediately, or wait a few minutes for it to cool slightly to cut into whatever shape you want (I chose rectangles) and then serve.
*Any leftovers can be stored in an airtight container for 3-4 days in the fridge. Re-heat in the oven.*