Joël Robuchon’s Michelin Starred Pommes Purée (Mashed Potatoes)

Recipe first – Click Here –

I first tasted this dish at Joël Robuchon in Las Vegas which was adorned with the exceptionally difficult to attain 3 Michelin stars. Chef Robuchon passed away in 2018 and was given the title of ‘Chef of the Century’ by the guide Gault Millau so he is a credible source!

If you didn’t know: Michelin stars are based on a max 3 star system. The ranking is put out by the same Michelin company that is stamped on your tires. It was originally put out as a guide to the best restaurants in France and then Europe as a travel guide in order to get people to travel farther, and thus, use tires faster.

1 star: ‘A very good restaurant in its category’

2 star: ‘Excellent cooking, worth a detour’

3 star: ‘Exceptional cuisine, worth a special journey’

It is creamy, buttery, and only bares a slight resemblance to traditional mashed potatoes. Ignore the amount of butter from a health perspective as this is only meant to be eaten on a special occasion, and it will ruin the delightful culinary journey.

Staying on course with simple ingredients made great there is a total of 4 ingredients in this dish. You can use yellow or red potatoes. The waxy texture of yellow or red potatoes works well in the dish and replicates closest to the rattes potatoes Chef used.

Start the potatoes unpeeled in cold water and bring to a boil, simmer until you can stick a fork right through them (about 25 minutes). Peeling the skins after seems like it may be one of the ‘secrets’ that distinguish this dish, or Chef was a sadist and wanted my hands to burn while peeling hot potatoes.

Here are said burning hot now peeled potatoes. Obviously being more patient would have a better result on my hands. I peeled using a normal soup spoon because the potatoes were soft.

I put the potatoes through a ricer and on repeating the recipe would have done it a second time to make sure the potatoes were as smooth as possible.

After adding the potatoes to the pot, cook off any excess moisture for a couple minutes and start adding cold small butter cubes while mixing constantly.

After the butter, milk is added and it starts to hit the consistency we are looking for. It should drop off the spoon like chocolate pudding (probably like other flavours of pudding as well though I don’t have that experience).

Salt and white pepper were added to taste (apparently the french have something against cracked black pepper. It also causes unsightly black specks).

As you can see from the picture it is a little lumpy vs what the goal was which is silky smooth deliciousness. The flavour was great, and while it still needs some work to compete with the late great Chef, topped with reverse seared rib eye and you can’t go wrong.

Cole Rating: 8/10