The French word "gratin" has many meanings, both culinary and non-cooking. This crushed glass and phosphorus, which are applied to matchboxes, also has the meaning of “the cream of society,” which, however, has nothing to do with cooking. Gratin is also dried and crushed black bread that is sprinkled on the bottom of baking dishes. But the most common and understandable meaning of this word is “casserole”. In general, gratin is not the name of the dish, but a method of preparing food, namely baking it in the oven with cheese or breadcrumbs. You can cook anything in this way - vegetables, meat, mushrooms, fish, seafood. If in a French restaurant on the menu next to the name of a dish you see the inscription au gratin, this means that it will be served baked with a crispy crust, and not boiled or fried in a pan.
We associate gratin with casserole, which is not surprising, because it is practically the same thing, the only difference between the dishes is that gratin must have a crispy golden crust, while casserole may not have one. Gratins are prepared, like casseroles, from whatever is in the refrigerator or on the supermarket counter. A vegetable gratin with zucchini and tomatoes, generously sprinkled with herbs and breadcrumbs, turns out to be tasty and light like summer. This dish combines meat and potatoes, mushrooms and porridge very well. You can surprise your guests by preparing seafood gratin with a mozzarella crust. Recently, fruit gratins, which are topped with cream and baked at high temperatures, have also become popular.
This is a very easy dish to prepare. We suggest preparing potato gratin with meat and mushrooms.

Taste Info Unsweetened casseroles

Ingredients

  • peeled potatoes – 1 kg,
  • meat – 400 g,
  • mushrooms – 300 g,
  • onion – 1 pc.,
  • hard cheese – 200 g,
  • mayonnaise or full-fat sour cream – 100 ml,
  • boiled water – 200 ml.


How to cook potato gratin with mushrooms and meat

Cut the meat into small pieces, add salt, and fry until cooked.


Cut the onion into half rings and fry along with the meat until golden brown.


Peel the mushrooms, cut into thin slices and fry in a frying pan until cooked.


Cut the potatoes into thin slices. Place on the bottom of a glass baking dish. This dish is ideal for gratin, the heat spreads evenly and the dish does not burn.
Pour boiled water over the potatoes. This is necessary so that it is stewed, soft and juicy.


Place meat on potatoes, then mushrooms.



Drizzle everything with a little mayonnaise or sour cream.


Grate the cheese on a fine grater and generously sprinkle the casserole with it.


Bake the potato gratin in the oven for 50 minutes.


The cheese forms a beautiful golden crust on top that will not allow moisture to pass through, so all the ingredients inside will be very soft.


You can sell gratin to the table in the same glass form in which it was prepared.

Hello, my darlings! Today I was preparing a French dish and I did it a little wrong, I forgot to add some ingredients. But, despite this, the dish still turned out to be very tasty and therefore, I hope that you will like my version. I will tell you how to make potato gratin, not the classic one, but with minced meat, and then the recipe with photos step by step. In my version, I didn't add things like garlic and nutmeg, but you can do that if you want.

In fact, when I was looking for a recipe for a classic gratin, I was a little confused. Each author offered his own version and it seemed to me that they were all good, but I didn’t know which one to choose. So, in the process, my own version was born. Yes, this is not a classic option, but nevertheless it is no less tasty.

How to make potato gratin with minced meat recipe with photo

Products:

  • Minced meat – 200-300 grams
  • Potatoes – 5-6 pcs.
  • Onion – 1 large head
  • Cream – 150-200 ml.
  • Flour – 1 tbsp.
  • Cheese – 150 grams
  • Salt, spices to taste

Step-by-step recipe for making potato gratin

First you need to fry the minced meat a little in a frying pan. There is no need to fry it too much; you can do it until half cooked, since the dish will still be baked in the oven. When the minced meat is fried, you need to salt it a little and add spices to taste.

Cut the onion into half rings.

Peel the potatoes, wash and cut into slices.

When the minced meat is ready, transfer it to the form in which we will bake the gratin.

And in the same pan you can fry the onions. The onions don't need to be fried too much either. It needs to be slightly simmered until soft.

Place the fried onion on top of the minced meat.

Place the next layer of potatoes. If you want, you can alternate layers. You can add finely chopped garlic between the layers, which I forgot about.

Add flour, salt, some spices to the cream and stir well. At this stage, in the classic version, nutmeg is added.

Pour the resulting sauce over the potatoes and place in an oven preheated to 200C. Bake the gratin for about 35-45 minutes. In general, I like the liquid to completely evaporate in such a dish, so I keep the dish in the oven a little longer.

Grate the cheese on a coarse grater.

When the potatoes and meat are ready, remove the pan from the oven, sprinkle cheese on top and put it back in the oven for 5-10 minutes.

Well, that’s all, our potato and meat gratin is ready, I hope you liked my version. Keep the dish in the switched off oven for another 15-20 minutes and you can serve it. This dish is perfect for both a festive and everyday table. Before serving, decorate with herbs. Bon appetit!

Cooking time: 2 hours

Number of servings: 6

How to cook gratin with meat, step-by-step recipe with photos:

Step 1. Peel the onion and cut it into thin half rings. Fry it in a heated frying pan until golden brown and set aside.

Step 2. Fry the minced meat in butter until tender along with a chopped garlic clove and cognac.

For my dishes, I choose minced meat made from beef and chicken fillet. It turns out to be less fatty than pork and beef and at the same time has a very rich, soft taste. With this minced meat I cooked both, and.

Step 3. Wash the old potatoes, peel them and cut them into thin slices (no more than 3 mm thick). Grease a heat-resistant dish with butter and place a layer of thinly sliced ​​potatoes on it.

To prepare gratin, do not wash the sliced ​​potatoes. It's all about the starch contained in the fruit. It is thanks to starch that connects the layers, “glues” them together, and a homogeneous pie is obtained - gratin.

Step 4. Place fried minced meat and finely chopped herbs on top of the potatoes.

Step 5. Cover the minced meat with the remaining potatoes, pour the broth into the mold, cover it with foil and put the gratin in the oven, preheated to 200 degrees for 30 minutes.

Step 6. While the gratin is baking, prepare the filling: mix cream/sour cream, paprika and salt in a container.

Step 7. After half an hour, take the pan out of the oven and pour the creamy filling over it. Let it bake without foil for another 20 minutes.

Serve the finished gratin cooled with herbs and your favorite spices.

Your dish is ready, bon appetit!

Meat gratin or French meat- a dish borrowed from French cuisine. The word “gratin” is not only the name of the dish, but also the method of preparation. Gratin can be sweet or savory. Meat gratin prepared mainly from beef and pork. Today we will tell you how to make a classic French beef gratin.

Meat gratin: cooking secrets

To prepare meat gratin, you will need a heat-resistant dish. This could be a casserole dish, a roasting pan, or a cast iron roasting pan. It is known that in heat-resistant dishes with a thick bottom and walls, the temperature is distributed more evenly and lasts longer. This is very important since we are dealing with a multi-layer dish.

Before you start laying out layers of food, grease the walls of the dish in which the dish will be baked with butter. This simple culinary life hack will prevent food from burning.

Advice from T-Bone: for more flavor, the walls of the dish can be greased with a clove of garlic.

A properly prepared gratin has a thick golden crust and a juicy, fully cooked filling inside. The secret to a successful dish lies in the correct temperature conditions. First, the gratin is baked at a moderate temperature, and then raised to 200 degrees and baked for 10-15 minutes.

If you do not regulate the temperature during baking, then most likely your gratin will turn out half-baked or, on the contrary, burn.

If you cook grtain with meat and vegetables, keep in mind that the vegetables will begin to release juice. Don't be surprised if the finished dish floats in its own juice. To prevent this, pre-fry the vegetables in a pan and use less sauce.

Meat gratin with potatoes

This is the most popular meat gratin recipe. First, peel the potatoes and cut them into medium-thick slices. To prevent the potatoes from darkening while waiting in the wings, fill them with cold water.

Now let's talk about meat. As we have already written, gratin is often made from beef or pork. We suggest you make a choice in favor of beef. Lean meat with a pronounced beef flavor is what you need for a classic French dish.

In a greased form, lay out all the ingredients in layers: meat, then a layer of potatoes, sauce on top and repeat again. The last layer is grated cheese. It is this that gives the dish an appetizing golden crust.

Meat gratin is baked for about 40-50 minutes at a temperature of 180 degrees. 10 minutes before the end of cooking, the temperature in the oven must be raised to 200 degrees to form a dense crispy crust.

Ingredients:
  • Potatoes - 600 g
  • Minced beef - 300 g
  • Onions - 1-2 pcs.
  • Garlic - 2 cloves
  • Paprika - 1 tsp.
  • Cognac - 2 tbsp. l.
  • Broth - 200 ml
  • Cream - 200 ml
  • Yogurt - 300 g
  • Hard cheese - 100 g
  • Butter - 40 g
  • Salt - to taste
  • Vegetable oil - 2 tbsp. l.
How to cook Potato gratin with meat:

1. Prepare all the necessary ingredients. Peel and rinse the vegetables. If you make minced meat yourself, then pass the meat through a meat grinder.

2. Cut the onion into thin half rings and fry in a frying pan in a small amount of vegetable oil until transparent.

3. In another frying pan, fry the minced meat, stirring frequently until it becomes crumbly. Add 2 cloves of garlic, previously crushed with a knife. Also add paprika, salt to taste and pour in cognac. Cook over low heat for 5 minutes.

4. Cut the potatoes into very thin slices (you can use a vegetable peeler). Place all potato slices in a deep bowl and cover with cold water to remove excess starch. Then drain the water. Grease a baking dish with butter, place a third of all potato slices on the bottom of the dish in an even layer, and add a little salt.

5. Place half of the fried onions on top.

6. Place half of the minced meat, sprinkle with finely chopped herbs on top.

7. Place a layer of potatoes, the rest of the onions and minced meat and cover everything again with the remaining potatoes. Don't forget to add a little salt to each layer of potatoes.

8. Pour the broth around the edges of the mold. Whip the cream together with yogurt, pour the resulting mixture into the dish. Place in the oven for 40–50 minutes.

9. When the potatoes are already soft, sprinkle everything generously with grated cheese and keep in the oven for another 10-15 minutes so that the cheese melts.

Bon appetit!