Tartiflette, the alpine potato, bacon and reblochon gratin

Category

One-Dish Meals

Cuisine

French

Are you looking for an alpine one-dish meal, the kind that goes to the table in its dish and needs nothing else beside it?

Then tartiflette is what you want. I will walk you through this Savoyard gratin of potatoes, bacon and onions, topped with half a reblochon that melts and runs into every layer.

The step nearly everyone skips is browning the potatoes. Boiled to al dente and then returned to the pan in the bacon fat, they take on colour and flavour and stay whole under the cheese instead of falling apart. That is the difference between a tartiflette and gratinated boiled potatoes.

There are at least three good reasons to make it: five ingredients, an hour of work, and a level of satisfaction that settles a whole dinner without anything else.

Reblochon is the cheese of the original recipe and goes in cut horizontally, crust side up: as it melts it releases its cream downwards. If you cannot find it, taleggio behaves very similarly, with a slightly different character but an equally convincing result.

Serve it piping hot, just rested, with a green salad dressed sharply. This is not decoration: it genuinely balances how rich the dish is.

Ready? Let’s get started with tartiflette.