Fondant Potatoes

     I keep seeing the bougiest potatoes all over my for you page. Time after time I saw then but never dared to try making them. However, my husband and I have a tradition where we do our Valentine's Day date dinner at home. That way we can have exactly what we want and a candlelight dinner without spending an absolute fortune. So, I decided that this was the perfect opportunity to test out this recipe!

    To make these there are a lot of steps, which is one of the reasons I always thought these were so intimidating. However, each step goes by really fast and actually doesn't end up being that hard. The first of these steps is to of course peel and cut my potatoes. The picture is from when I made these for Valentine's Day so I had used a cookie cutter to make heart shapes. However, normally I just peel them and slice them into discs that are all roughly the same thickness. Once the potatoes are prepped, I cooked them in some oil on medium-high until each side is browned and crispy. Once I have achieved a "crust" on each side, I break out my butter and herbs and let them cook for a little bit just until my butter starts to brown. While it was browning, I used a spoon to scoop up some of the butter and pour it over the tops of my potatoes so that each potato was nice and coated in the butter.

    Before I even started cutting up my potatoes, I had preheated my oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit, so by the time they were done on the stove the oven was done preheating. This is important so that the butter doesn't burn. If your butter does burn its not a huge deal but it will affect the final color and give a slightly more smoky flavor than you might want. As soon as my butter had reached the desired color I pour my chicken broth into my pan and bring it to a quick boil. This helps accelerate the cooking process so I am not cooling down my potatoes too much by introducing cold broth then sticking it straight into a hot oven. this also helps deglaze the pan and whatever herbs are sticking to the pan become more evenly distributed. 

    Once my broth has reached a boil, I pop my pan into the oven for about 40 minutes or until my potatoes are fork tender. After the 40 minutes is up, I pull my pan out of the oven and let everything sit for about 10 minutes. This allows the potatoes to soak up some of the juices in the pan. While it is resting, I like to taste  the "sauce" (I use quotations because I do not know if it technically should be called a sauce but it sounds better than juices) and see if it needs a little bit more salt. If it does, I salt the sauce slightly and swirl the pan a bit to incorporate it, avoiding actually disturbing the resting potatoes as much as I can. 

    After the 10 minutes is up I serve my potatoes with some of the sauce that I cooked them in and garnish with a pinch of flaky salt. The flaky salt is totally optional especially if you added extra salt to the sauce but it always makes me feel extra fancy. 

    The end result is the most amazing soft melt in your mouth potatoes with a crisp exterior and impeccable flavor. One of the hardest things to do with potatoes is actually figure out how to get the flavor through the entire thing without mashing them or something. Because they are so dense the middles often end up a little bland but this recipe results in an impossibly flavorful bite all the way through! The internet also told me that fondant means "melting" in French so technically these are called melting potatoes. After tasting them myself I totally see where that name comes from now! 

    What did you think of this recipe? Leave a comment below!