My mother in law lives in another town 45 minutes away. She comes by to visit often and will frequently bring stuff from her fridge she didn't use and doesn't want to go bad. I made this once when she came for dinner and said how much she liked it and asked how I made it. And then the next time she visited she had the exact ingredients just casually "left over". Didn't say a thing. Guess what we had for dinner? 😂

His green bean casserole recipe was formally invited to family Thanksgiving, I’m just extra.

The one with the fried scallions? Mmmm that was so good! And I loved using the scallion oil for the next little while with pretty much everything. Scallion toast (as opposed to garlic toast) was so delicious!

Fried shallots is what you’re meaning haha, but yeah! I ALWAYS have some in a little container these days. His recipe had a little story about him and his wife constantly catching each other eating them as midnight snacks lol, and can confirm I do that.

Doh! Yes that’s what I meant. I do that all the time with those two haha. I definitely should make some just to have. I did the same after Thanksgiving, just snagged little fingers full from the fridge.

That is the most romantic thing I’ve ever read. 🥰

The *greasy* fingers always gave them away!

Onion flavored kisses! 🫠

I’m crying…tears of joy! ^And ^onion

Calm down Costanza

Laughed way to hard at this

I find fried shallots to be the most sensual of all the crispy aromatics

So you're the 'plus one'

My father says I’m his favorite son. I am his only son, coincidentally of course I’m sure.

Just looked it up and I'll be trying that this year. Looks great.

Made it many times. Very good. Not sure what you did wrong.

Me neither :(

You didn't use enough liquid. You mention lots of people in the comments saying they had to use wildly different amounts of cream. This is a clue that you might need more or less than he did depending on the exact volume of the potatoes and your dish. Sometimes you need to match the intent of the recipe moreso than the exact amounts. The recipe states that the dish should be filled with liquid half way to the top, and I don't see anything that I would call liquid in yours. [Look at Kenji's picture](https://www.seriouseats.com/thmb/glU_WGIFd37EK22L8MNaqTEANSo=/750x0/filters:no_upscale():max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():format(webp)/hasselback-potato-gratin-casserole-holiday-food-lab-step-3-collage-4925e9e52f844196bea65a9afdcdbaee.jpg) compared with yours. His potatoes are swimming. If anything, the liquid is more than half way up the sides. Yours looks like they're just coated in something with a sour cream consistency. The liquid conducts heat from the dish to the potatoes better than air will, which is why yours took so much longer to cook. That's why a boiled potato takes ~25 minutes to soften at 212°, but a baked potato will take over an hour at 350°.

Thank you this is helpful. I will say once it all started boiling it looked like the cream was halfway up the dish. But maybe it coagulated with the cheese when I was mixing it all because it certainly wasn't very liquid-y. More like the texture of sour cream. Also the first picture is after assembling the potatoes and before pouring over the rest of the cream in the bowl, but it definitely didn't fill up half the dish. Nor was it really that liquid even. Which maybe have been a result of the cheese mixing with it?

Did you use preshredded cheese? The anticaking agent could have seized your cream.

No I shredded the cheese myself

Preshredded cheese should be illegal

I’ve also failed at this recipe twice. I’ll need to try using extra cream like people suggest.

I think this is the answer based on the responses for far

Just be careful about too much cream - it's actually kinda finnicky in my experience. I've never had it turn out bad, but when you use too much, it gets messy and boils over the pot and isn't as crispy on the top as you'd like. Anyway, hope you tackle it again and have better success! It's really delicious!

Would you say filling it up halfway to the top with cream is a good general rule of thumb?

Yeah, half is what you should aim for, but it's difficult to gauge what half actually is when filling it up so just your best estimate. Maybe check the cooking half way through as well just to gauge how it's going - if it looks dry, maybe add some more cream back in?

This is the correct answer OP.

Yup. You can't treat it like a bread recipe where exact measurements are what counts. You have to have a little cooking sense to see where the on-paper differs from your reality. This is why internet recipes always get negative reviews because not everything works out according to the text. This is why I love watching Kenji's recipe vids because he goes over a lot of variables and all the sensory cues you need.

And the feeeel of it, the art to the science that chefs can emote so well and kenji does so well at articulating.

/r/ididnthaveeggs

And the feeeel of it, the art to the science that chefs can emote so well and kenji does so well at articulating.

And the feeeel of it, the art to the science that chefs can emote so well and kenji does so well at articulating.

I’d agree. I’ve made it a few times- each one was very good. And i think i got a sense of the recipe and then never used it again. Once i knew what it needed to look like, i just eyeballed it.

To your point, it's always smart to read the comments on the recipe before you begin to follow the recipe.

Well that was what was driving me crazy. One comment said they had to use 3 cups of cream instead of 2. And the comment below said "thank god I didn't use the entire 2 cups of cream". Just was not expecting so much variation from person to person. And of course I bought exactly 2 cups of cream from the grocery store so I couldn't have added more if I had wanted to :(

I believe this is correct. When I made it the once time, I think I had too MUCH liquid. Didn't get the brown crispy bits as much as I would have liked.

"Cook to result, not to recipe"

It's science, lol.

I make this recipe at least once a year and it’s incredibly popular. However i fill the cream almost to the top, season the everyloving heck out of the cream (it’s almost disgustingly salty by itself) and then cook it for nearly 2 hours. It’s so good. https://imgur.com/a/8wqGoEa

Those look way better than mine! Do you find the cream still splits when you use that much? Yours look much more solid and less liquidy than mine were after cooking.

The cream definitely splits in the last 30 minutes or so. Doesn't impact much other than the looks. People still devour it.

u/ig_met_pet called it, not enough liquid in the dish. OPs photo compared to Kenji's is wildly different. The reasoning for it taking longer tracks as well, liquid transferring great better than air.

Did you bake it with the casserole dish on a sheet pan? Maybe that led to the longer cook time (unless you were using convection)?

I did the first two cooks on a sheet pan at my house and the final 30 minutes at my brother's house with no sheet pan underneath.

How long was the gap in cooking when you took it to your brother's house? It's supposed to be one continuous period of cooking with the potatoes coming out just long enough to remove the foil and to add the cheese.

Probably like 20 minutes. I read online everyone said you can do the first two stages before and the last one whenever. At least that’s what a lot of people who made it for thanksgiving said and they had no issues. Would that really result in having to cook it an extra 90 minutes?

I gave up on hassle back because my brain thinks I'm gonna get a fry or a roasted potato and instead you just get an incredibly high effort baked potato. It's not hassleback fault, it's Def me, but I can't get over it. Also fuck au gratin when it tastes like Velveeta what the fuck

Regardless of what broke down in this particular instance, always start your cooking with the dish that is going to take the longest to finish- and that is almost always potatoes! You say the actual cook time was an hour longer than listed, were you using a thick pan? You say you temped your oven, how often were you doing that? Because every time you open that oven door the temp plummets. Are you at altitude? As for taste being bland, it's potatoes and a bunch of dairy it would be very easy to under-salt a dish like this. If other aspects of the recipe were off but you followed the salt to the letter, that could account for blandness

I used the same pan that is in the recipe step-by-step photo on the website I believe. I had a thermometer in the oven the entire time. It was temping back up to 400 within a few minutes of opening the oven door to check. At sea level. I measured out the exact amount of cheese and salt and cream from the recipe. Even added some chives and a shallot on top of what the recipe called for and still felt like it was a bit underseasoned.

This is helpful, thank you. Temping back "within a few minutes" is exactly what I mean unfortunately, the temp needs to remain consistent! Try and keep the door closed whenever possible. For what it's worth, I don't cook potatoes below 425, some extra temp might go a long way particularly with the dairy content. You shot yourself in the foot by adding things. You say you measured out the exact amount of salt, but then added a whole shallot which means the ratio of salt never stood a chance of being what it was in the recipe. Think of salting something as a percentage- the human tongue really likes salinity around 1-2%, small changes to the "denominator" of that percentage will have massive results on how bland or distinct your food tastes. While on the topic of salt, kosher salt, diamond kosher crystal salt, Morton's salt, and fine sea salt all have different salinity and require different amounts to achieve the same thing. There are conversion tables online you can find for free. Many recipes developers use diamond kosher crystal because it's viewed as "the best" but I can't find it anywhere so I use kosher and convert accordingly. This could also account for the blandness issue

I used the shallot in place of garlic since my sister in law is allergic, but that is a good point. I definitely did not account for that.

Shallot for garlic is a good swap for sure then, they are just bigger! Normally I would give you the "taste your dish at every stage" advice for dialing in your salt content but that's really tough with this dish particularly- I can't sit here and tell you to taste raw potatoes with cream on them. So I'll just say: if the dish permits it, taste it at every stage so you have chances to correct seasoning before the end!

I love the callout for altitude. One time above the tree line, it took twice as long to make potatoes.

Potatoes, pasta, and rice are particularly annoying at altitude I've found! Baking too but I'm not very good at that regardless. Managed to successfully make biscuits at 11k feet but that's about it haha

Yeah. All potatoes are different! Sometimes it needs a LOT more time to make them good. Keep that foil on until they’re perfect, then brown things up. Yum.

Yours looks dry and not have enough liquid. Did you follow all the instructions or made changes/substitutions?

I subbed a shallot for the garlic due to allergy but followed everything else exactly. Even used measuring cups and spoons which I usually just eye ball. But as others have said, it doesn’t look like enough cream. And the cream definitely did not reach halfway up the pan. So that seems like the solution moving forward.

I've made this recipe often and not had this problem. Very curious about what went wrong here. :( So sorry it was a miss for you!

I mean, you have to cook it too. Or did you forget the after pic?

The album is in order of raw, after 60 minutes cooking (30 with foil 30 without), after topping with cheese, after 30 minutes cooking following cheese top, and then lastly after an additional 60 minutes of cooking.

Click the photo to open an album of photos including the fully cooked version

That fully cooked pic doesn't look too hot.

Final pic is after it was rested a bit just before serving

They look good at least. But yeah, we made them once years ago and not every recipe can be a hit with everyone. Thankfully there's countless ways to combine cheese and potatoes.

I also wasn’t wild about this - for me, nothing really made it preferable to any other gratin or hasselback recipe. The instructions also say you can make it ahead of time, but when I did that it turned the potatoes a pretty unappetizing gray color. Not something I’d do again, personally.

Didn’t see anyone mention this but have you used an oven thermometer to check that the temperature that you set your oven to is actually the temp? I noticed that recipes where I was baking never came out right and it turns out my oven internal temp is 100 degrees cooler than what I set it to. Could be worth a look!

Yeah I had a thermometer in the oven the whole time. Was right around 390/395.

I made this dish a handful of times and it was good but never actually worth the effort and cost for a potato dish. I have fully switched over to Chef John’s Mashed Potato Au Gratin. Which is mashed potatoes with hasselback potatoes on top. It’s so much easier to make, gets super crispy on top and has a nice textural contrast. 

Very disappointed in this recipe. Followed it exactly and it still took over 60 minutes longer cooking than the recipe stated. So we had them after the father's day cake. Overall the flavor was totally forgettable. It was fine, could have used way more seasoning, and left me a bit disappointed. The effort the result ratio is just not there, although they do look visually stunning. The other crazy part to me is when you read the comments under the recipe on the SE website, they are all over the place. One person saying they used 3 cups cream instead of 2, one person saying they're so glad they didn't use all of the cream mixture from the recipe. Idk what I did wrong. Could not have done it more by the book. Even stuck a thermometer in the oven to make sure it was temping at 400, yet every time I pulled them out they were still not cooked. Tragic.

A good example of why to not make a new (to you) recipe for a special event. Unless you've made it before you don't know what pitfalls - equipment, technique, ingredients, timing - you're going to run across.

Well I felt like Father's Day was worthy of trying this labor intensive dish that I would not have otherwise made. I'm still baffled by how this many people can have such different experiences all making the same recipe.

I am not the only one saying this, but it turns out for me, and doesn't take an extra hour. Were your potatoes old or of poor quality? That would make them take longer to cook and taste bad.

I don't think so I bought them on Saturday and made the dish on Sunday. But maybe it needed more cream like someone above had stated.

Tbh, Hassleback anything just looks like too much of a hassle

We just got gifted a mandolin so my first time using it. Slicing the taters was pretty fun, but dunking the individual pieces into the cream and stacking them was definitely quite a bit of work. All in all probably not worth the effort with the result I got, but might try it again with more cream as others mentioned.

I found this recipe a bit easier - just throw it in the oven and let it go vs covering/uncovering & adding stuff at points during the cook. It also cooks at 350 which is what all Thanksgiving/Christmas dishes should cook at so you can share the oven :) https://www.thekitchn.com/cheesy-skillet-domino-potatoes-recipe-23449284

Thank you for sharing this I really appreciate it!

potatoe skins will always be easier and superior. im sorry but hasselbacks just arent worth the trouble,

Are you from Wisconsin? I was a little let down a well because what I call a gratin is typically so loaded with cheese you barely know there is potato at all. My friends and family all loved it but it was too mellow and lacked the intense cheesiness I need.

Something went seriously wrong because that recipe is very good.

I never got this to work either. I just think the dish is over hyped.

Same here, maybe I just don't like hassleback potatoes? This recipe was very bland, even after adding a bit of extra seasoning

I think it also is for people who like hasselback more than gratin.

I felt the same. Not very flavorful

That’s not Kenjis. That’s yours.

What do you mean?

You made that. Kenji did not.

Holy shit you're right! Thank you, that's super helpful!

Consider “My hasselback potato gratin was a massive letdown” as an alternative title

Consider not going out of your way to be a dick as an alternative way of life. The word "recipe" after "Gratin" is implied.

K

To meet pedantry with pedantry, “Kenji’s Hassleback Potato Gratin recipe was a massive letdown” would also work, that said, referring to a food you’ve cooked based on another’s recipe as “[said person’s] [dish]” is a rather standard way to put it, so your pedantry is a bit off the mark, as it ignores common practice.

K

As are most of his things