I said that this recipe was a labor of love, but what I really meant was that I forgot about this recipe for Pommes Anna when I said that and I take it all back. This recipe was a real doozy to perfect. Luckily, like moms always say after childbirth, you eventually forget the pain and only remember the happiness (but like, are they really being honest?). Now, I remember the excitement when this final version came out of the pan.
I first made Pommes Anna for a French dinner party I had for 10 people I was traveling to Spain and France with, and it came out absolutely perfectly! It had not yet sensed my fear because when I made it again—and again and again—it never quite worked, from sticking to the pan to a sadly pale crust. Nothing like what you see here. But I would not give up; I had done it once before! I experimented with different recipes and techniques and finally landed on this recipe.
What Is Pommes Anna?
Pommes Anna is a classic French dish of thinly sliced potatoes tossed with butter and layered into a cake with a golden-brown, crisp crust and meltingly tender, buttery potatoes inside. Potatoes are truly magical—they start out as ugly, dirty, brown nubs that can be transformed into almost anything. Hardly anything gets quite as crisp or as luxuriously soft as a potato. The French have a way of making humble foods look and taste elegant, and this is no exception. With just a few ingredients, the end result is much more than the sum of its parts. 
How To Make Pommes Anna
You’ll need a couple pieces of equipment and ingredients* to make this recipe:
The process starts by peeling potatoes—a mundane kitchen task that I, for some reason, love, despite its almost universally hated status in most other households. Holding the potatoes in cold water after peeling helps prevent them from oxidizing and discoloring. Once your potatoes are peeled, they need to be thinly sliced, so they both stack and compact easily and cook evenly. Again, make sure to hold them in water after slicing. Rinse them in cold water and pat them as dry as you can.
Clarified butter is traditionally used to prevent it from burning as this cooks in the oven; I find it hard to source clarified butter in the grocery store, but ghee is readily available and very similar. You could clarify your own butter, but I’m going with ghee—flavored with garlic, of course.
After your potatoes are dried, toss them with the melted ghee and potato starch; the fat will help prevent further discoloration while the potato starch helps the slices stick together to give a tighter structure to the cake (a trick I learned from Smitten Kitchen). Preheat your cast-iron skillet over medium heat and add a little olive oil (for a little more richness) once hot. The trickiest part is layering the potatoes in the preheated skillet…don’t burn yourself! You want to continue to compact the potato cake as you layer the slices. You really want this to be one cohesive cake when it’s done so that you can slice and serve.
Once your cake is layered, keep the skillet on the stove over medium heat for another few minutes; this will help jumpstart the browning on the bottom. Transfer to the oven, covered and weighted with a skillet, to finish cooking through. Once the potatoes are tender, I transferred this back to the stove to put a little more direct heat on the bottom of the skillet, further ensuring a crisp crust. I highly recommend you shake the pan as you do this to ensure the bottom is releasing easily. The combination of achieving a crispy crust while also being able to remove the potato cake, whole in all its glory, from the skillet was one of the biggest challenges I had when developing this recipe.
*Note: This post contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases made through affiliate links. 
I like to serve with crème fraîche, chives, and flaky salt and pepper on top. You can also add some microgreens or arugula because a salad on top just feels healthier, right?
Go ahead and plan a French dinner party for you and your friends. This side dish will steal the show. Bon appétit and enjoy!
[tasty-recipe id=”41300″]
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