welcome friends welcome back to the
kitchen today out on the yoder smoker i
have
a brown sugar rubbed chicken that i'm
smoking and so to go with that i want to
do a potato side dish
and so i want to make a smoky potato
gratin or scallop potato dish
to go along with the chicken and we're
going to cook that in the smoker
at the same time along with the chicken
we're actually going to cook it
underneath the chicken so the chicken
drips down on top of this dish so we'll
get the smoke we'll get the chicken
flavor
it should be really good so i'm going to
start out by slicing
these potatoes super thin i'm going to
do them about a sixteenth of an inch
and as soon as you get to a point where
you're uncomfortable or if you are
uncomfortable
right from the beginning using mandolin
use the guard
i usually get down just a little bit
farther before i switch to the guard
and i've got this i've got this cast
iron frying pan that's heating up and
that is the frying pan that we're going
to use in the
smoker and so i'm heating that up and
i'm going to fry off this bacon so as
soon as that's warm
which it is i'm going to put the bacon
in and we're going to
fry it and render out the fat get the
bacon
almost crisp because i'm trying to
render out the fat i don't want the
temperature on this frying pan to be too
high
off the start kind of going with a
medium medium
low bring it up slowly and we'll keep
slicing these potatoes
so i'm using an idaho potato or a baking
potato
some people would call it a dry potato
or a starchy potato
i'm using a potato that's going to give
a very creamy texture
to the finished dish so i'm going to put
these into a bowl
where we're going to mix everything i've
already chopped up a jalapeno pepper
and i'm going to put that in leave the
seeds in take the seeds out really it's
up to you
i've got a couple of small onions that
i've chopped up and the amount of onion
that you add in
again up to you more onions if you like
more onions less if you don't like them
you could also put in leeks work really
well in this dish
garlic if you want to put garlic in go
ahead and put garlic in you can really
play
with the flavors on this one as long as
it's mostly potato you can add almost
anything you want in here
okay it looks like the bacon is done so
i'm going to use a slotted spoon and i'm
going to pull the bacon out of the pan
you want to leave the fat in the bottom
of the pan because we're going to make a
roux
and don't panic making a roux is super
simple so as we get the bacon out of the
pan you need to assess how much fat is
left
we're looking for about three to four
tablespoons of fat
because we're going to add in about
three tablespoons
of flour so
i don't think we've got enough fat left
in the bottom so we can top that up
a little bit of butter and we'll just
melt that in
now once the butter has melted in we'll
add the flour
and we stir the flour in and you want to
cook the flour
until it starts to change color it's
going to start to go
brown and the browner it gets the more
flavor you add the depth of flavor you
add
and some people because this is going to
be a white dish or you want a white
color to this dish they're not going to
cook it too far
they're not going to add too much flavor
they're not going to make it too brown
because that would change the color of
the dish
at the same time because i'm going to
cook this on the barbecue or on the
smoker
i think that color will be fine and the
added flavor is fantastic
so we just keep cooking this down and
stir it don't let it burn
and at the same time you can start
pulling up some of the fond from the
bacon that's on the bottom of the pan
now i'm going to switch to a whisk and
i'm going to slowly add in a little bit
of milk
and whisk that in
and i've got this on a fairly low heat
at this point you don't want it to
burn so i think i've got enough milk in
there
now i'm going to add whipping cream this
is 35 cream
and i'm gonna put in about two cups
it's thick that cream is thick we'll
just whisk this
in until we've got a nice smooth sauce
sauce is coming together really well so
i'm going to add a little bit of black
pepper
and it's best to add the cracked black
pepper into the sauce that's way
it mixes into the whole thing a little
bit easier
and you have to be careful with your
salt because there's bacon in it so
depending on how salty your bacon
is you need to adjust the amount of salt
that you add i'm going to add
just a little bit more than a pinch
maybe two pinches
so mix that into the sauce i'm going to
move on to the cheese now i
am using pizza mozzarella which isn't
mozzarella at all
but it is a really nice melty cheese
and it's not the kind of cheese that
adds a lot of flavor but it melts really
well and it's
gooey and it's going to make the
interior of this dish really
unctuous and wonderful but you could use
any sort of really melty cheese you
could use a colby monterey jack
wisconsin brick would be amazing in this
pizza mozzarella is something that's
easy for me to get now i was going to
grate it but it doesn't grate so well
um or at least hand grater it doesn't
grate so well so i'm going to cut it
into little chunks and add it in
the flavor cheese is going to be
parmesan
although i might use pecorino i don't
know we'll see what comes out of the
fridge
okay so put the cheese in the bowl with
the potatoes
the bacon onion and jalapeno peppers
and we're going to give this a good mix
okay
i think i'm going to need a bigger bowl
to finish mixing this so let me get one
let's see let's do this one now i like
to
mix the white sauce and the potatoes and
everything together in a big bowl like
this
and then put it back into the pan for
cooking because then you get the coating
all over every bit of the potato
i find that when i just layer in and
then pour the sauce or the bechamel or
the white sauce over top
i don't get a good coating and i get
spots where there is no sauce
um and i really like to have the sauce
everywhere so
put this in get as much of the sauce or
the bottom of the pan as we can
and then give it a really good mix give
it a good stir
get the sauce everywhere
this is also the point where if you
think your sauce is too thick you could
add a little bit more milk to thin it
out
i think i might need to but i'm going to
put it in the pan first and see
so we'll dump this back into the pan
get it all back in there
and get it distributed around in the pan
i'm going to add just a little bit more
milk not too much you could add water
you could add chicken stock if you
wanted to
you don't want it too dry
because it will dry out on the barbecue
or in the smoker or in the oven if
you're doing it at home in the oven
any way you're cooking it will dry out a
little bit and you don't want that to
happen too much
so i'm going to grate in some hard
cheese this is pecorino
you could use parmesan you could use any
hard aged
cheese that's really flavorful that you
like
this is going to add that top layer of
flavor that's just going to push the
dish over the edge
and out to the smoker okay
out at the smoker it's set at 350
degrees fahrenheit and i'm gonna sit
this right
under the chicken let the chicken drip
down on top of it as it cooks
we'll leave that for about an hour
before we look at it again
hi friends i am just waiting for glenn
to come in from the pellet grill
here he goes look at that
that looks pretty good it does look
pretty good okay so
the pan is hot okay pan is hot suggest
the potatoes are also hot so the
potatoes will be hot
they'll be gooey and oh
that looks amazing definitely hot do i
get a bowl
oh oops no you'll have to share
um so this is this is um this is a
pretty simple scalloped potato recipe a
little bit of a roux that you mix up
i used uh pizza mozzarella as a melty
cheese for the middle and then parm on
top
there's bacon there's onion that's all
it's got all the parts
jalapeno pepper and it's hot
just a hint of smoke like it's not too
smoky because the pellet grill was
running pretty hot
so that we had a fairly crisp skin on
the chicken
but it's just something that's just a
little bit not the same as the other
versions that you have of it
yeah so this is not huge it's not a huge
flavor it's just like
that's just a little bit different this
is not the scalloped potatoes that drop
down on every family easter table that
i've ever sat down to there's just a
little bit i love those scalloped
potatoes
this is just a little bit different this
this brings a hint of
you're outside and you're cooking on the
grill now you could cook this in the
oven
definitely you could cook this on a gas
grill if you wanted to
you might miss some of that smoky flavor
not that it's pronounced it's just a
hint
i think this is a really good dish and
it's going to go excellent
with that chicken we just cooked so come
on back for the chicken and if you
haven't
also check out this cauliflower side
dish that we did for our dinner tonight
thanks for stopping by see you again
soon
i burnt the back of my tongue
you