Easy and quick to prepare, potato gratin goes with everything. It goes well with poultry supremes, roast beef or oven-grilled fish. To prepare it, it’s very simple: we cut the potatoes into slices which we place in a dish, we add béchamel, gruyere and we repeat the step until we fill the dish. For some, it lacks flavor while others get tired of the classic recipe. Here are some ideas for a change from the classic recipe.
Diversify cheeses
A gratin without cheese is not a gratin. To change from Gruyère, you have the choice between mozzarella, parmesan, reblochon or even goat cheese to give a delicious taste to the gratin. For a melt-in-the-mouth recipe, we’ll opt for grated mozzarella, whereas if we want intensity, we’ll opt for goat’s cheese.
Protein
Who said potato gratin is just a side dish? Nothing stops us from adding bacon to make a sort of tartiflette recipe or minced meat for a variation of shepherd’s pie. If you are more fishy, you can include pieces of white fish such as cod fillet or cod to make a revisited version of cod brandade.
Vegetables
We think of our vegetarian friends or those who would like to keep the potato gratin as a side dish and not as a main dish. So we add vegetables like mushrooms, onions, sweet potatoes cut into slices, zucchini, carrots, etc. You will have understood, you are free to add what you wish since the potatoes are very easy to adapt.
Sauce
To spice things up, marinate your potato slices with a little mustard. You can also make a sauce based on crème fraîche which will perfectly enhance the gratin and give it creaminess and generosity. A forest sauce or a crème fraîche-curry sauce will be very nice instead of béchamel. As with pizza, there are those who prefer a white base and those who prefer it red. For the gratin, it’s the same. It can be made with homemade tomato sauce or a “pink sauce”. Pink sauce is a tomato sauce, which, upon contact with crème fraîche, lightens and becomes pink. Tomato sauce, crème fraîche, garlic and parmesan are added to the potatoes. It is delicious !
A hint of spice
In a recipe, spices change everything. In addition to coloring, they enhance and flavor the preparation. Opt for paprika, curry, sweet pepper, nutmeg but also ras el-hanout. You can also add dried Provence herbs or dried thyme.
