1000 Layer Duck Fat Potatoes

Irene found this and suggested I'd like it because it seemed even more fussy than Hasselback Potatoes or even Francis Mallmann's Potato Dominoes. The recipe in Food and Wine magazine didn't match the photos accurately, but their video helped.

Fine crackly outer shell, creamy insides

We chose Yukon Gold potatoes for their creaminess, rather than the dry floury russet or waxy red varieties. We had a bunch of beautiful clear duck fat we rendered when making duck confit sous vide; it was already well-seasoned from the confit and smelled great, so we didn't add salt later. We probably could have used less fat if we'd cut our slices thicker, since there would be less surface area. We didn't have an 8x8-inch pan, so we used a bread loaf pan that's a bit larger then 8x4-inch, and dropped the potato amount to fit.

1360 g   3 pounds  Yukon Gold Potatoes
 120 ml  1/2 C     Duck Fat, slightly warmed so it's liquid
         1 Tbs     Salt (if your fat isn't pre-seasoned)
                   Oil for frying

Line the pan with a parchment sling so you can remove the potatoes, and extend the paper over the sides enough to cover the top.
Peel the potatoes.
Slice thinly on a mandolin: the recipe's desired 1/8th inch was too thick for their photos, but we probably cut ours too thin -- we really could read a newspaper through them when coated in duck fat.

Slice thin: ours were too thin, 1mm is probably about right

Mix thoroughly with the Duck Fat, coating both sides.

Coat all surfaces in liquid duck fat

Layer the sliced Potatoes into the pan on the parchment; this was tedious with our super thin slices.
Top with any remaining, now-starchy duck fat.

Layering was tedious with such thin slices

Wrap the extended parchment over the top, cover with foil and press it onto the surface.

Bake at 150C/300F for 2-3 hours, until a wooden skewer pierces them easily (remove the foil to test).

Remove foil and add a same-sized pan, press down and add weights to compress the potatoes.

Refrigerate overnight compressed like this.

Weight the top to compress the layers

Remove top parchment, turn out, remove remaining parchment.
Cut into 3cm or 1-inch towers: I used a 4x8 grid since that's the approximate dimension of our pan.

Put pieces on a parchment-lined baking sheet, cover with cling film and freeze overnight.

Potato towers waiting for the freezer

Maybe not 1000 layers, but it's a lot!

Deep fry the still-frozen towers in 190C/375F oil about 5 minutes until deep golden to brown and crunchy outside; don't crowd the oil or the temperature will drop too much -- 10 seems about right; try to prevent the towers from sticking together, but don't break them apart.
Place on paper or paper towel, sprinkle with coarse salt.
Serve immediately.

Served with brined, roasted chicken, end-of-season cauliflower

The crunchy exterior was delightful, the interior very creamy from the Yukon Golds.

Next time: slice the potatoes a bit thicker, 1mm sounds right; this will allow us to use less duck fat, and speed assembly, but hopefully give a more textured outer crunch. Decrease the oil temperature a bit so they don't darken quite so quickly.