Joel Robuchon's Mashed Potatoes

[MobyP]

I regularly buy imported French Ratte potatoes from Borough market which are easily large enough - and fresh enough - to use for purees.

[Ptipois]

Alright, I'm going to make some mashed potatoes.  Ptipois, I am going to follow your advice and do some investigation into the best potato to use.  I'll start with the other potato in the recipe, BF15.  What are the characteristics of the BF15, and are there any other names for it?  Any insight would be appreciated!  

Here is one website with a chart, and they say that neither the ratte nor the BF15 are good for puree.  I do see the Bintje everywhere at the market.   Perhaps a mix? 

Potato Chart

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BF15 are more suitable for purée than rattes are, but the problem is that finding good-quality BF15 is not easy. Organic shops will rather carry other varieties. Rattes for purée are a funny idea only a three-star chef could possibly have, or maybe it's a deliberate tweak. Both will yield a denser, stickier mass than regular bintjes or other mealy potatoes, and if you use a blender, even at low speed, you must be ready for potato glue. I'd choose (as I wrote) a large organic charlotte, when it has had time to develop properly as a good all-purpose potato. When bintjes are unavailable, of course.

Bintjes remain the best choice for me, though they have to be first-quality.

My very personal opinion is that Robuchon's purée may be very famous, but it is not the purée to end all purées. It is competition food, a bit show-offy with all that butter and mystery surrounding it, but I'll take a good home-made traditional French purée with a reasonable amount of butter, i.e. poor people's purée, any time. Robuchon-style purée (and star-chef purée in general) is different from the ancestral French purée. It is more like some kind of potato and butter sauce. It is also much less digestible, the main characteristic of a proper purée being its lightness on the stomach, and thus it is a less good accompaniment for main dishes (better as a dish on its own).

In old-time France, nobody at home could ever afford to put so much butter in a purée anyway. In a poor household it would have been unthinkable, in a bourgeois household it would have been offending to the principles of home economy, in aristocratic households it would have been either one or the other depending of how well the family did financially (from hereditary poverty with holes in the château roof to the benefits of clever business during the early 19-century restoration). So Robuchon-style potato purée is clearly a modern, cheffy, desincarnated avatar of the old French dish.

And so, to get back to more modest but un-grandcheffed French purée, it is based on bintjes, milk, and butter. Large chunks of peeled bintjes simmered in a mixture of milk and a little water until tender. Salt added in the end. Drain well, rice in moulin à légumes while still hot (NEVER a blender and careful with the hand masher, unless you use it quite vertically, with no sideways or circular motion. Though with bintjes you don't have to be concerned with the potatoes getting gooey.). First add a little cooking liquid while mixing with a fork, then add butter in the end, I'd say 1/10 to 1/5 butter to the potato mass. Don't overmix, and add lots of pepper. And here comes the secret...

The real purpose of bintjes in purée is indeed their relative tastelessness and their unique texture. Other potatoes (especially rattes) just have too much flavor and make up for this "potato sauce" aspect I described above. They soak in the butter, so you have to use an indecent lot of it. The bintje actually carries the butter flavor much better than any other potato, and that's exactly what lies at the heart of French-style purée: lightness, mildness, a comfortable fluffy smoothness (but not too much of it), and butter as a flavoring, not as the basic principle of the recipe with a little potato to give it body. When the purée is made that way, the butter taste is experienced "on top" of the potato basis and is not overpowering, but it is very present, much more than in the chic recipe. It is then recommended to use the best farm butter, made from raw milk, that you can find. A purée made with bintjes will enable you to taste the difference, a purée made with sticky potatoes won't. As a result, you don't have to add much of it.

Edited December 5, 2005 by Ptipois (log)

[Ptipois]

So... a mix, for the flavour.  Yes?

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I would not recommend a mix since Robuchon-style purée and just purée are two distinctly different dishes. I think Moby's post (which I hadn't read yet when I sent mine) summed up my lengthy point very concisely.

If you want robuchon purée, use the potatoes robuchon recommends. If you want true french purée, use bintjes or another starchy equivalent.

[Ptipois]

Ptipois, do you know of anyplace where they may be still producing these large sized primitive rattes or are they long lost history?

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I've never seen those large rattes on markets. Only in private vegetables gardens in Auvergne and the Cévennes. They taste definitely very different from the modern mass-cultivated rattes (which I loathe).

[getxo]

Would someone be kind enough to inform me who currently runs the kitchen (chef de cuisine) in L'Atelier (Paris)?

[molto e]

Would someone be kind enough to inform me who currently runs the kitchen (chef de cuisine) in L'Atelier (Paris)?

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Chef Erick Lecerf

[PaulaJK]

I am not aspiring to work in Robuchon's kitchen.....but

would love to make a 'kind-of batch' in advance for a dinner

party. Will I run into major problems if I peel the potatoes

first? Then break them up w. a hand held mixer as I

dry them over a low flame..i.e. no ricer? I read above

about holding after the butter process...but would it

be possible to hold butter/milk completed recipe in

a bain marie for 3 hours?

[russ parsons]

many years ago when michel richard started using this puree, i did something on it. i started with the smaller amount of butter and it just didn't have the same silkiness. when i called him to ask him about it, he said with an almost inexpressible sadness "pas de beurre; pas de beurre." for the record, his version used equal weights butter and potato and no milk or cream. it was incredibly luxurious--not really about the potatoes, but about a new texture for butter.

[MobyP]

Paula - you'll have choose what potato type you want, and what proportion of butter, but follow this method and you should be okay.

[digito]

Hi,

When I did this. I got a problem that's not described (or i missed).

steps:

1. cook and mash potato

2. boil and stir potato paste to reduce water.

3. Add cold butter piece by piece.

4. Add hot milk to adjust stickiness

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When cold butter is incorporated into to potato paste. Is heating stopped or not? because it takes quite long for cold butter to melt and the potato may getting cold too. Heating the paste may liquefy the butter.

When adding milk how's the temperature of the paste. Same situation as above.

if potato:butter is only 4:1 or 2:1. There is no problem. But when I tried 1:1, it just like incorporating a small measure of potato into lots of butter. The temperature of potato and butter becomes a series problem.

Edited October 12, 2009 by digito (log)

[Jan Stoel]

OK, this is a very old topic, but I need some advise.

I made the pommes puree with ratte potatoes and used a lot of butter and passed it twice trough a fine tamis (no blender!). The puree was very sticky and thick in the beginning and still has a slightly odd consistency even though I diluted it with milk.

Is this just due to the ratte potatoes or could there be another cause. I never made or tasted pommes puree made in a blender, so am not familiar with 'potato glue'. I'm thinking of making it tomorrow, to compare it to my pommes.

Anyone else made the puree with ratte potatoes and thoughts on the consistency?

[carlux]

I haven't made puree with ratte potatoes,and wouldn't, as they are waxy, and you need softer, starchier potatoes. I dont know what to recommend where you live, but here in France, supermarkets actually sell potatoes marked as to what they are used for. In the farmers' markets, where I shop, if I have a question about a particular type, I just ask the vendor. So you need to get yourself the proper potatoes for puree/mashed potato.

You really dont ever want to make potatoes in a blender. All that starch really will produce glue. I use a vegetable mill, or you could use a potato ricer.

[eternal]

I tried the double-poach method last night. 160 for 30, chilled to room temp and then up to 180 for another 30. Well, I was getting hungry and had stuff to do so at the end I brought it up to 190 or 200 until they were done. So maybe 15 min at 180 and another 10 at 190+. I think put through a ricer and then added a cream/whole milk mix and whisked away. I'm not sure if I didn't cook the poatoes enough but there were definite bits (i hesitate to say chunks because they were really small) of potato in the end mixture. I think the whisking helped but I whisked for multiple minutes and they didn't all go away. They tasted great but that part seemed off. Did I just undercook them or did I not whisk enough?

I finished with butter and there was no gummy-ness. Aside from the bits, they were the best mashed I've ever made.

Edited January 25, 2012 by eternal (log)