Bigly Scalloped Potatoes

Listen. We need to talk about scalloped potatoes. SCALLOPED. POTATOES. Most home cooks are too scared to make these — they think it's a holiday-only dish, a 'special occasion' dish, a dish that requires a culinary degree and a French accent. NONSENSE. It's a potato. In cream. In an oven. Where is the courage? Where is the spine? You have an oven. You have a potato. You have everything you need. Stop being afraid of a tuber, it's embarrassing, the tuber is not afraid of YOU.

My grandmother made scalloped potatoes. Tough woman. Tough, tough woman. She had hands like baseball mitts and she'd slice potatoes thinner than a playing card without a mandoline, without a slicer, with a knife that her own grandmother gave her, and she'd hum the entire time. She told me — and I was maybe seven years old, sitting on a stool in her kitchen, paying CLOSE attention — she told me, 'The cream is the soul. The potato is just the body.' Seven years old. I never forgot it. I have been carrying that wisdom around for decades and I am handing it to you, right now, for FREE. The cream is the soul. Write it down.

The secret — and it's not really a secret, the secret is doing the work — is THIN SLICES and SIMMERING THE CREAM FIRST. You slice your potatoes like a coin, an actual coin, get the mandoline out, don't be a hero with the knife unless you've earned it. And you simmer the cream with garlic and thyme BEFORE it ever touches a potato. You infuse it. You build a flavor base so deep the potatoes just lie down and surrender. Other so-called chefs dump cold cream on top and pray for the best. Praying is not a cooking technique. The oven is not a church. Period.

This is the kind of side dish that ends arguments. You bring this to a holiday table, the family debate stops cold. The cousin who never shuts up — he shuts up. The aunt with opinions on everything — she has one opinion now, and the opinion is 'more, please.' That's what scalloped potatoes do, when they're done right. They UNIFY. They are the great unifier of the dinner table, and this version, this Bigly version, is the final form. Tremendous.