Name: Hachis Parmentier
Prep time: 30 min
Cook time: 3 h 36 min
Total time: 4 h 6 min
Yield: 6 servings
Cuisine: French
Ingredients: 900 g beef shin or cheek, in large pieces; 2 onions, chopped; 2 carrots, chopped; 3 tbsp olive oil; 2 tbsp tomato purée; 400 ml red wine; 500 ml beef stock; 3 bay leaves; 4 thyme sprigs; 1 ½ tsp fine sea salt; 1.2 kg floury potatoes, peeled; 250 g butter, diced; 200 ml whole milk, warmed; 1 ½ tsp fine sea salt; ¼ tsp ground nutmeg; 60 g Gruyère, grated; 30 g breadcrumbs

Hachis Parmentier

Braised beef minced by hand under a potato purée and baked. The French version predates the English one and is made from leftover pot-au-feu rather than raw mince.

4 hr 6 min total Serves 6 servings Easy

Making Hachis Parmentier Ahead

Refrigerated for 3 days. Reheat at 180°C / 356°F for 25 minutes. It freezes assembled for 3 months.

How to Make Hachis Parmentier

Tap a step to highlight it, or turn on Cook Mode for large type and step-by-step focus.

Brown the beef hard in the oil, 8 minutes. Add the onions and carrots and cook 10 minutes.
Stir in the tomato purée, then add the wine and boil 3 minutes. Add the stock, bay, thyme and salt.
Cover and simmer 150 minutes, until the beef falls apart. Lift it out and reduce the liquid to about 200 ml.
Chop the beef by hand on a board into a rough hash and moisten it with the reduced sauce. It should be damp, not wet.
Boil the potatoes 25 minutes until soft, drain, and pass through a ricer or mouli.
Beat in the butter a handful at a time, then the warm milk, salt and nutmeg, until glossy and soft.
Heat the oven to 200°C / 400°F. Spread the beef in a dish, cover with the purée, fork the top into ridges, scatter with cheese and breadcrumbs, and bake 45 minutes until deeply browned.

Something wrong or unclear in this recipe? Report a problem with this recipe.

A Few Pointers

Braise then chop. Raw mince is a different, lesser dish.
A quarter of the potato weight in butter. It is not a misprint.
Fork ridges into the top — they are what browns.

Why the Method Is What It Is

The meat is braised and then chopped, not fried from raw mince, and the difference is total: braised beef has already given up its collagen and tastes of the wine and stock it cooked in, where raw mince browned in a pan tastes of browned mince. This is the dish that leftover pot-au-feu was invented for. The purée wants an alarming amount of butter — a quarter of the potato weight — because it has to stay soft over an hour in the oven.

Serving Ideas

Green salad · A glass of Côtes du Rhône · Cornichons

Sides from the same cuisine on this site: French Baguette, Fougasse, Pain aux Noix.