Food - Drink
What Makes Aligot Stand Out From Regular Mashed Potatoes
By LAUREN ROTHMAN
If you love mashed potatoes and you love cheese fondue, then you're going to want to get to know aligot, a cheesy French potato dish that is basically a combination of the two. Aligot hails from the south-central region of Aubrac, and it involves mashing potatoes and then working in quite a large amount of grated cheese (Serious Eats recommended Swiss and Gruyère) to give it a thick, stretchy texture.
While overmixing regular potatoes leads to leaden, gluey mashed potatoes, you’re actually encouraged to thoroughly mix the mashed potatoes in aligot. This builds up the starchy content in the dish and lends it the stretchy texture that helps define it.
Serious Eats' recipe for aligot takes mashed potatoes — in this case, passed through a ricer — and works them quite thoroughly in a pan with butter and cream, stirring constantly in order to make the potatoes sticky. Then, the grated cheeses are folded in, and as the outlet explains, the cheese will not separate or "break" as melted cheeses sometimes do.