- 9 minutes ago
Executive Sous Chef Daniel Gronert of Somssi in NYC shares what it takes to make their elaborate Potato, Potato, Potato dish. Using creamy Yukon Gold mashed potatoes, crispy spiralized russet potatoes, miso hollandaise sauce, and golden osetra caviar, Gronert turns the humble potato into a luxurious fine-dining experience.
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00:08Hi, my name is Daniel Gronert, executive sous chef here at Tsumshi in Greenwich Village,
00:13and today we'll be showing you how to make the most interesting potato dish. This potato dish
00:17is called potato, potato, potato. What makes this the best potato dish is that you have an ultra
00:27creamy mashed potato in the center and a very crispy potato around the outside sitting in a
00:32luxurious miso hollandaise sauce with a mound of caviar on top. It's kind of like a McDonald's
00:37hash brown on steroids. The first potato for our potato, potato, potato is going to be this Yukon
00:45Gold, and we're going to use it to make our palm puree. Palm puree is a fancy way of saying
00:51mashed
00:51potato, and you'll see that inside of the potato, potato, potato. These potatoes we try not to peel
00:57ahead of time. We find that if you peel it, it kind of keeps and soaks some of that water
01:01that's
01:02used to make the boiled potatoes. Yukon Gold we find is very perfect for this application
01:07because of its medium starch content and high moisture content, which will help kind of bind
01:13the dairy that we put into it, the milk, the butter, the cream, and will result in a much less
01:19gluey palm puree. And they're going to boil for around 30 to 40 minutes just until they're buttery
01:24soft. You can slide kind of right through with a cake tester so we know the inside is very tender
01:30and soft and ready to be peeled and mashed. The potato, potato, potato, how that kind of came about
01:35is Aris Kim, our managing partner and part owner, thought it would be kind of funny to have a dish
01:42on the menu called potato, potato, potato. So now our potatoes are peeled. They're still quite warm,
01:48which will help us break down the potato through this food mill here.
01:51The potatoes kind of get sucked down into the bottom, kind of creating this little vortex here,
01:57and it'll all get pressed down to give it a nice smooth consistency. Every single day there's an
02:05element of this potato dish that needs to happen, whether it's the cooking, the making of the palm
02:10puree, the breading of the potato, the wrapping. It's potato day every day.
02:16So then we'll take this kind of rice potato mixture that we just passed through the food mill. We'll
02:22place it all on top of the tammy. This will help us get a nice smooth texture on the potato,
02:27as well
02:28as catch any kind of residual lumps or potato skin that might have gotten milled down into it. So now
02:34here that we have these slightly warm potatoes, you can see the texture of it. It's quite smooth. It's
02:40quite soft already. This is with nothing added. It's just the potato itself. And we're going to go
02:45ahead and slowly incorporate about a third of the time the dairy mixture into it while whisking it.
02:52It's quite important to work with the potatoes while it's warm, as well as the dairy. The colder it
02:57gets, the more kind of gluey and hard to work with it'll become. So the reason why we kind of
03:02wanted
03:02this creamy is essentially to when you cut open the potato, you kind of have this nice, luxurious,
03:08soft, and sometimes also oozing potato mix coming out of this cage of potato, if you will. For this
03:16potato here, once the dairy is all incorporated, we'll go ahead and throw all of our butter in here, which
03:21it's not for the faint of heart, but it sure makes a great mash. This one's just unsalted cultured butter.
03:27Now
03:27you'll start to see this mash go to a pretty soupy consistency. Very nice for us as we're going to
03:34kind of pour it right into those molds. So now we're going to go in with our salt and white
03:38pepper.
03:39The salt for sure helps season the whole potato. I personally enjoy white pepper more specifically
03:44with potatoes. I think it complements it very well. I think black pepper can get a little too harsh,
03:49while white pepper plays in really nicely with the potato. Once everything is fully homogenized in the
03:56potato mix, it'll have a nice thick kind of luxurious consistency to it, in which case we'll
04:02know it's ready to be poured into the molds. This is Spud. He's kind of our little mascot. He lives
04:07right
04:07up here. Kind of watch over everybody enjoying the potato. These are the molds that we use to shape our
04:14potato. That's a silicon mold. We can pour it right in, we can freeze them, and they pop out perfectly.
04:20This batch here is going to yield us about anywhere from 95 to 105 potatoes. It's super liquidy.
04:27We'll take this, we'll smooth them out, get each mold filled here. We're just going to slam it on the
04:33table
04:33a couple of times, just to ensure there's no air bubbles or pockets that haven't been completely filled
04:38with potato. The reason why we put these in the freezer is so they can firm up, they can develop
04:43this nice
04:43kind of trapezoidal shape and it'll make it so much easier for us to bread and wrap the potatoes.
04:50These potatoes we did the other day and we popped them out of the molds already. This is kind of
04:55what
04:55they look like. Little chocolate bars, little gold bars if you will. We're going to take them upstairs to
05:00get that second potato done.
05:05The second potato here is going to be in the form of potato starch. It'll coat the outside of the
05:11palm
05:11puree to kind of seal it in so when it fries it doesn't ooze out. We take our palm puree
05:17here,
05:17they've been popped out of the silicone molds. We'll go ahead and give it a nice coating of the
05:23starch. Give this a little bit of a tap to kind of free up those clumps. Otherwise those clumps will
05:29kind of turn into this gluey mess and it's not very pleasant to eat. Dip it into our egg wash,
05:36which is just eggs. Dip off the excess and go right into the sourdough breadcrumbs. And sometimes when
05:44we have bread left over from our dinner service it will go ahead and cut it up into smaller pieces.
05:49We'll dehydrate it to get it nice and crispy and crunchy and then kind of break it down in the
05:54robo coop. So now we're ready for part three of our potato, potato, potato.
06:02The russet potatoes we found work really well for the outside spiralized potato because it has a very
06:09low moisture content and it has a little bit of higher starch content than the Yukon golds. And
06:14because it has such a low moisture content it's not going to go crazy in the fryer. And it's going
06:18to
06:18get wrapped around that potato. Once it's fried it'll kind of act like a cage kind of trapping all that
06:24palm puree inside as well as it'll create a nice crispy exterior of potato strings. We mix our water
06:30with a chemical known as sodium acid pyrophosphate. And actually funny enough McDonald's uses it for
06:37their french fries. And what it helps do is it prevents oxidation of the potatoes. So we can keep the
06:43potatoes in water overnight and the water won't turn red. It yields a much better finished product as well.
06:49So this is our trusty spiralizer. It's been through a lot. We have a new one but we're not taking
06:55it out
06:55of the box yet until this one completely falls apart. So it kind of creates these really long strands
07:01of potato that you'll see here. Almost like potato hair. And the longer they are the better they are for
07:06us. And they'll be great for us to fry later on. We'll take these breaded potatoes. We've popped them
07:13back in the freezer so just so they can firm up a little bit. They're again easier to work with.
07:17And then we'll
07:18take some of these here. Potato strands kind of start from one side and work all the way down. Just
07:23go
07:24all the way around. We'll try to cover it so that all you see is the kind of potato strings
07:29on top.
07:30Once we've wrapped the potatoes with our spiralized russet strands, we'll then quickly freeze them just so
07:36the outside potato can freeze up a little bit and firm up so they're not all waving around in the
07:42fryer.
07:44We'll take a few potatoes drop them in each one of our baskets and we'll just go ahead and lower
07:49them
07:49in. We're frying in just plain canola fry oil. Initial temperature is around 370 to 380 degrees.
07:56And we'll drop these frozen potatoes in. What that'll do is that'll kind of lower that oil
08:02temperature. On these potatoes we're going to go ahead and do a double fry. So that first initial fry
08:07is to kind of set kind of a baseline of the the color, but more so since it is frozen,
08:14we're trying
08:15to have that initial fry bring everything up to a reasonable temperature. We'll pull it out, we'll rest
08:21it, and then the second fry is going to ensure kind of more even coloring as well as the inside
08:27getting nice and consistent temperature. They've rested for a few minutes and we're ready to drop them
08:33back in. Then these potatoes will go again for about two and a half, three minutes. So now that we've
08:39pulled
08:39these out of the fryer, they've completed their second fry and they are ready to be plated.
08:46This potato potato potato dish is plated with this miso hollandaise sauce that you'll see on the very
08:52bottom of that plate. We'll add in these core ingredients, water, sugar, and salt with a little bit of
08:59white pepper, the lemon juice, our egg yolks here. This white miso paste is going to give us a nice
09:05background of this deep umami filled flavor that you'll find that's going to be a little bit different
09:11in most hollandaise sauces. This is our brown butter here. It's already been heated up to about 155 to 160
09:18degrees. This one is going to get slowly streamed into our mixture here to kind of help emulsify
09:24everything together. This is a super labor intensive dish and funny enough this is going to be the one
09:29thing that we kind of cheat a little bit on. Once it's at the proper thickness and viscosity, we'll
09:36just go ahead and strain it right through our chinois. This is going to be the base of that miso
09:41hollandaise
09:42sauce that we'll then put into an ISI canister. Very commonly found in restaurants, you can put any kind
09:48of liquid in here. We charge it with these little guys. We use nitrous oxide for it. We'll charge it
09:54twice. It'll release all the gas in the air into the base that we put it in and it'll kind
10:00of create
10:00this luxury very light foam cloud-like sauce. And we'll give it a nice vigorous shake then this will be
10:08ready for service. This dish it comes together pretty quickly. There's only a few components. They all play
10:16a pretty prominent role though. So first off we'll start with the miso hollandaise. We keep it warm in
10:22this ISI canister and we'll go ahead and pipe some down onto the bottom of our plate here.
10:30Once we have that down we'll have some of these cut chives and we'll just sprinkle some right on top.
10:36It gives it a nice pop of color. It also cuts through some of the richness to this dish. We'll
10:42then
10:43add the potato right in the middle of the fluffy cloud sauce and the chives. And then the final touch
10:51we're using a golden Ocetra caviar to finish right on top. We're just going to take about 10 to 12
10:57grams
10:58quenelle nicely. And quenelle is this fancy term. It's a football shape and we'll just kind of push
11:03it back and forth between two spoons to kind of create this shape. So when we first thought of this
11:09potato potato potato dish we wanted to add kind of another luxury element to it to kind of bring
11:15this humble potato to the next level. That's our potato potato potato. What I like to do is I kind
11:20of like to smash this beautiful quenelle and kind of destroy it but kind of evenly disperse all the
11:27caviar. I can cut right into the middle here. This palm puree nice and hot here and kind of crush
11:35down.
11:36You can hear how crunchy it is. And let's take a little test here.
11:45Perfect. It's a very nice crispy outside, reminiscent of almost potato chips. The inside
11:52perfectly hot, very silky palm puree, beautifully seasoned. The miso hollandaise adds a nice bright
11:59lemony effect to it. And the caviar is just kind of the cream on top. This is kind of where
12:05we started.
12:05The humble potato. And we've taken it through quite a journey to get to this stage. And it just kind
12:11of showcases what you can do to something as maybe as boring and as humble as the potato. And for
12:18this
12:18dish specifically, I want them to have that kind of first bite and be transformed. Whether it be through
12:25nostalgia or just because they really, really like potatoes. And kind of take that first bite and just
12:30think to themselves, wow, I didn't know potato could be this good.
12:34I don't know potato.
12:35Yeah.
12:37So
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