KO EN Swedish Side dish⏱ 90 minEdit history

Hasselback Potatoes (Accordion-Cut Roast Potatoes)

Name: Hasselback Potatoes (Accordion-Cut Roast Potatoes)
Prep time: 25 min
Cook time: 1 h 5 min
Total time: 1 h 30 min
Yield: 4 servings
Cuisine: Swedish
Ingredients: 8 potatoes; 40 g butter; 2 tbsp neutral oil; 1 tsp flaky salt; 3 tbsp dried breadcrumbs; 20 g hard cheese, finely grated; 2 chopsticks or wooden spoon handles

Potatoes cut into close slices that stop short of the base, then roasted: a Swedish dish first made in 1953 at the Hasselbacken restaurant in Stockholm. The cuts fan open in the oven, so the thin tops go crisp like crisps while the uncut base cooks soft like a baked potato. There are two kinds of cooking in one potato, and the depth of the cut decides how much of each you get.

Ingredients

4servings

potatoes · about 120g each, a variety that holds its shape8
butter · melted40 g
neutral oil2 tbsp
flaky salt1 tsp
dried breadcrumbs3 tbsp
hard cheese, finely grated · optional20 g
chopsticks or wooden spoon handles · to stop the knife2

Steps

Heat the oven to 220°C (200°C fan). Peel the potatoes — Swedish recipes usually do — or scrub them if you want the skin on.
Lay each potato between two chopsticks and slice it at 3mm intervals. The knife hits the chopsticks and stops, leaving about 5mm joined at the base. If a potato rolls, slice a thin sliver off its underside to flatten it.
Rinse them in cold water, easing the cuts open with your fingers so the starch inside washes out. Drain, and dry them completely, between the slices as well.
⏲ 2 min
Mix the butter and oil, brush half over the tops and salt them. Set them cut side up in a tin and roast for 30 minutes. At this point the cuts are still closed, so the fat coats only the top.
⏲ 30 min
Take them out: the cuts have opened. Brush on the rest of the butter, letting it run down into the gaps, and roast for another 20 minutes.
⏲ 20 min
Scatter over the breadcrumbs and cheese and roast 10-15 minutes more. They are done when the slice edges are deep brown and crisp and a skewer goes through the base without resistance.
⏲ 15 min

Tips & Variations

Variations

Skin on: scrub instead of peeling and the base becomes a baked potato in a dry skin, much like kumpir. The slice edges crisp just the same, and the base holds up firmer.
Stuffed cuts: thin slivers of garlic, bay leaves or cheese pushed into the cuts. The flavour goes in, but the gaps are blocked, so the edges crisp less.
Sweet potato or beetroot: the same knife work applies. Sweet potato carries more sugar, though, so its edges burn first. It is what Sunday roast says of parsnips: "parsnips carry more sugar, so they caramelise harder and burn more easily." Drop the oven by 20 degrees and give it longer.
Small new potatoes: bite-sized, so the base is thin and the whole thing leans towards a crisp. Cut a little less deep to keep the balance.
Same slices, other side: a gratin like gratin dauphinois lays sliced potato down in liquid, and this dish stands the same slices up in air. That is very nearly the whole difference.

Tips

One potato, two dishes. The sliced top is a stack of thin pieces, so it loses water fast in the oven's dry heat and goes brown and crisp. The joined base is a whole potato and cooks soft through on its own moisture. The deeper the cut, the more of it is crisp; the shallower, the more is baked potato. The chopsticks keep that ratio the same on every potato.
The base keeps the slices standing. Kumpir leaves the base uncut when it splits a baked potato: "Split all the way and you have two pieces of skin." The joined base does the same job here, but where kumpir uses that one layer to make an open bowl, this dish uses it to hold dozens of slices upright. Cut through the base and the slices fall and overlap, and overlapping slices steam each other.
Here the rinse has two reasons. One is exactly what patatas bravas explains: "Surface starch gelatinises in the heat into a gummy film, and that film holds water against the potato — while water is there the surface stays pinned at 100°C and cannot brown or crisp". The other is the cuts. In gratin dauphinois, "The only thing thickening it is the starch that comes out of the potatoes, which is why rinsing the slices washes that starch away and leaves the cream to separate into layers." The same starch that holds that cream turns into glue between the slices here. Unrinsed, the cuts bake stuck together and the fan never opens.
Why the butter goes on in two goes. At first the cuts are closed and the fat coats only the top. As the potato softens the slices part, and only then can butter get into the gaps and fry both faces of each slice. Put it all on at the start and most of it runs off into the tin.
3mm is the mark. Thinner and the slices snap as they fan; thicker and the fan barely opens, so the inside of each gap stays pale.
Test the base, not the edges. The thin slices cook long before the base does. Brown edges do not mean it is done: a skewer has to pass through the uncut base.