Fondant Potatoes - Crisp Outside, Melting Inside

Recipe: Fondant Potatoes Recipe »

These fondant potatoes are the ultimate French side dish that are crispy on the outside and buttery and melt in your mouth inside. They are also surprisingly straightforward to make at home using easy to find ingredients. These restaurant style potatoes will seriously impress!

About These Fondant Potatoes

Today we are mastering the art of Fondant Potatoes! Fondant potatoes are a French potato side dish (fondant means "melting"in French) of delicious buttery potatoes that melt in your mouth. Potatoes are peeled and cut into cylinders and then each side is browned and then simmered in stock. The end result is perfectly tender potatoes that absorb the flavour of the stock.

Why You'll Love these Fondant Potatoes:

They're divinely buttery and delicious. Once you try one you'll see why they're so beloved. The stock absorbs into the potato so you get lots of flavour inside the potato and did I mention garlic infused butter? ;)

They're made using regular ingredients that you can easily find at the supermarket.

They look impressive. There's a reason why you see these at fine dining restaurants around the world. They remind me of Hokkaido scallops!

There are so many potato fondant recipes out there but mine is made out of months of testing ever since Valentines Day when I started making them. I made so many batches of potato fondant before arriving at this recipe and my recipe has three important differences:

1. We use ghee and not butter. When you use butter you get milk solids coming out and they leave little black specks on the potatoes. But ghee is butter with the milk solids removed so you don't get this. You can also heat ghee to a high temperature and it won't burn because these milk solids have been removed.

2. Often fondant potatoes don't have a crispy bottom. They're tender and perfectly cooked but when I tried lots of recipes they just weren't crisp and I wanted mine to be super crispy on the outside and tender on the inside. So right at the end, we will crisp up our fondant potatoes using the ghee.

3. The idea is that your fondant potatoes won't have any liquid in them left once the time is up and that just the butter remains. But I found that during my testing, adding 1 cup to 2 cups there was always too much liquid left over and it wouldn't fully evaporate. I realised that it also depended on the size of the pan and the number of potatoes too and how snugly they fit. The magic amount of stock to add is enough for it to reach halfway up the potatoes!

Video How To Make Fondant Potatoes

Video: How to Make French Fondant Potatoes

Ingredients For Fondant Potatoes

Potatoes - Look for roasting or waxy potatoes like Nicola or Desiree (pink skinned, I used these). Dutch creams are a great all around potato.

Oil - Extra Virgin olive oil.

Ghee - Available in the Indian section of the supermarket. Excellent for cooking at high temperatures without burning.

Garlic cloves - Use fresh garlic cloves, peeled.

Chicken or beef stock - Some people prefer chicken stock, others beef. I prefer the taste of chicken stock so I used that.

Thyme - Sprigs of fresh thyme.

Tips For Making Fondant Potatoes

1 - Put the peeled potatoes in a large bowl of water. This washes away the starch (which makes them crispier) but also prevents potatoes from turning brown.

2 - Peeling and shaping the potatoes is a pretty laborious task and if ever there was a time to pull someone in to help, it's with this step! I find even getting Mr NQN to help peel the potatoes is helpful (I hate peeling potatoes).

3 - Make sure to pat the potatoes dry before frying to ensure that they don't spit when immersing in the oil.

4 - Use a metal cutter with a handle. I found these cutters ones were sturdy and easy to use (use the smallest one, around 4cm/1.6inch in diameter).

5 - You can use other herbs apart from thyme - rosemary is also good (usually a mix between the two is nice) or try sage.

6 - Be very careful and avoid touching the handle after the pan has been in the oven. Pan handles can stay hot for a long time. Wrap handle in a tea towel immediately after removing it from the oven.

7 - This seems like a lot of potatoes as you are using 1.2kgs or 2.6lbs but half of the potato is trimmed off. In the recipe below I'll show you how to use up these offcuts.

Other French potato dishes to try next: Pommes Anna, Duchess Potatoes, Tartiflette, Joel Robuchon's Amazing Mashed Potato and L'aligot.

Fondant Potatoes Recipe

An Original Recipe by Lorraine Elliott

Recipe Overview

Preparation time: 30 minutes

Cooking time: 30 minutes

Serves: 4 as a side dish

Ingredients Needed

• 10-12 potatoes (1.2kgs/2.6lbs)
• 2 tablespoons oil
• 40g/1.4oz ghee, melted
• 6 garlic cloves, peeled
• 1/2-1 cup chicken or beef stock
• 2 sprigs thyme
• Salt and pepper

Step-By-Step Instructions

Step 1 POTATOES - Peel the potatoes and place in a large bowl of water. Cut out 4cm/1.6inch rounds using the metal cutter and trim to 1 inch thickness. Round off edges with a vegetable peeler and place in a bowl of water. Repeat with the remaining potatoes. Drain potatoes and pat dry with paper towels.

Step 2 CARAMELISE - Place a 25cm/9.8inch frying pan with heatproof handle on medium heat. When the pan is hot, add the oil and place the potatoes cut side down for 8 minutes or until potatoes have caramelised. Turn over and repeat the same for the other side for 6-7 minutes. In the meantime, preheat oven to 180C/350F fan forced or 200C/400F conventional.

Step 3 COOK - Add the ghee to the pan along with the garlic and thyme. Carefully pour some of the stock into the pan until it reaches halfway up the sides of the potatoes and stand back (it will spit). Once it has stopped spitting, place the whole pan in the oven for 10 minutes. Then take out of the oven - use a teatowel and be very careful with the hot handle. Spoon ghee over the potatoes and return to the oven for another 10 minutes.

Step 4 CRISP - When potatoes are ready, take out the pan with a teatowel and wrap it around the handle. Place the pan on medium high heat and remove the garlic. Fry the potatoes on each side until crispy, around 3-4 minutes. Serve in a dish with some of the melted ghee, the thyme and extra salt sprinkled on top.

Step 5 LEFTOVER POTATOES (OPTIONAL) - Boil the potato cut offs until soft and tender. Drain and then add the garlic that was cooking in the butter as well as some ghee from the pan, hot milk and salt!

Personal Note

I tested these fondant potatoes out so many times that I was determined to master them. While all attempts were tasty I wanted them to be perfect every single time. And once I got it right, I wanted to serve them in a nice oval tray (I have a thing for oval plates and trays vs round).

I went to buy one of these vintage dishes from a shop. They had several sizes available online and I was tossing up between the medium one and the larger one. But they only had the medium one on display. I brought it to the front counter and asked if they had the larger one. She looked on their website and found it, then took out a tape measure and then measured out 31cm on top of the medium one. "That's what it looks like," she said.

"Is there one I can look at?" Because while the length was longer, I couldn't tell what the width was and when things get bigger they sometimes get deeper too. I just wanted to compare the two visually against each other.

"We don't have any display ones," she said deadpan.

"Okay do you have any non display ones that I can just look at? I just want to see it" I asked.

"No, we don't have any display ones." she repeated again, staring back at me. I don't usually come across rude people so when I do, it's kind of jarring.

"Ok but what if I wanted to buy one? Could I just take a look at it?" I said because sometimes they can just open a box from stock and you can just see it.

"We don't have any in the store," she said finally.

I had to laugh because that word display was a crucial one that caused a lot of confusion on my end. And hopefully you'll find this recipe much clearer and easier!

So tell me Dear Reader, do you like fondant potatoes? Do you have a cooking task that you hate (like peeling potatoes)?