French · Dinner

Tartiflette

A Savoyard mountain bake of potatoes, lardons and onions buried under a whole halved Reblochon, which melts down through the layers into a single molten sheet. Ski food, engineered to be eaten after a day in the cold.

1 hr 5 min total Serves 6 servings Easy
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Tartiflette

Photograph credit: Portion de tartiflette dans une assiette by Benoît Prieur · CC0 · Wikimedia Commons

The Method for Tartiflette

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  1. Boil the potatoes in well-salted water for 8 minutes — they should still meet a knife with some resistance. Drain and steam dry.

  2. Heat the oven to 190°C / 375°F. Rub a gratin dish with the cut garlic clove.

  3. Fry the lardons in the olive oil over medium heat until the fat has rendered and the edges are crisp, about 8 minutes. Lift out.

  4. Add the onions to the fat and cook for 12 minutes until soft and golden, adding the crushed garlic for the last minute.

  5. Pour in the wine and let it bubble away almost entirely, scraping the base of the pan.

  6. Add the potatoes and lardons back, fold in the crème fraîche and plenty of black pepper, then taste before adding any salt — the lardons and cheese bring most of it.

  7. Tip into the dish. Halve the Reblochon horizontally through its equator and lay both halves rind side up on top.

  8. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes until the cheese has flowed across the surface and is bubbling at the edges. Rest 5 minutes before serving.

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Things to Watch For

  1. If Reblochon is unavailable, a whole small Camembert or a Tomme de Savoie works, though the flavour is milder.
  2. Leave the rind on. It holds the cheese together as it melts and tastes of the mountain cellar it came from.
  3. Slice the onions with the grain so they hold their shape rather than dissolving into the cream.

Changing the Recipe

  • An eighth of a teaspoon of garlic powder per clove is the stand-in usually given when you are out of fresh garlic; it will not brown the same way, and it burns easily, so add it with the liquid.
  • A dry vermouth keeps for longer than an open bottle of white wine and is the closer swap than a random white left in the fridge; for an alcohol-free version, use the same amount of stock with a squeeze of lemon.

Good to Know About Tartiflette

Par-boiling the potatoes and then browning them means the interiors are cooked through before the cheese goes on, so the bake only needs long enough to melt — twenty minutes, not an hour that would dry out the lardons. Reblochon's washed rind carries most of the flavour, which is why it goes on rind and all.

To Go With It

A simple green salad with a sharp vinaigrette · Cornichons and charcuterie · A cold Savoie white such as Apremont

Sides from the same cuisine on this site: French Baguette, Bretzel Alsacien, Brioche Buns.

Storing Leftovers

Refrigerate up to 3 days. Reheat covered at 170°C / 340°F for 20 minutes. It freezes acceptably for 1 month but the cheese loses its stretch.

What's in a Serving

No nutrition figures are given for this recipe: they cannot be worked out reliably from its ingredient list (some ingredient lines cannot be read). Why some recipes have none.

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Compiled by Turab

Checked by script for timings, diet labels and nutrition arithmetic. How the recipes are checked. Found a mistake? Tell us.

First published ; last changed .