Scalloped Potatoes Recipe

0:00It's time for a recipe of the day. I've been making the exact same scallop potato recipe for Easter for the past 15 years. It started as a simple little side dish on the table next to the ham and the double eggs, but then over the years it became my family's favorite Easter dish, the thing that they asked for. But because it was so basic, I had never put it on the site before. You know, it's just scallop potatoes. Does the world need another scallop potato recipe? It's, you know, thinly sliced potatoes, a little onion, flour, milk, salt, pepper, all together, nice and tender. But then I actually realized that it is a perfect recipe. The potatoes are the perfect thickness for even cooking. The sauce to potato ratio is exactly right. They're not super saucy, just lightly coated, and they're baked just the right amount of time so that the potatoes are tender and the top just browns. And so I decided it was time to put it on the website. I'll also say, and I know I've told you this before, that my kids are now teenagers and they're

1:03cooking more on their own. And so I'm making sure to add the recipes to the website that are their favorites so that they can always find them and make them just like I did. So today it is this scallop potato recipe. You're going to love it as much as they do. I do have to say that there is no cheese in this recipe. I know. It sounds like blasphemy, right? No cheese and scallop potatoes, but technically the classic original scalloped potatoes do not include cheese. The potatoes with cheese are groughton potatoes or potatoes are groughton. The actual traditional scalloped potatoes did not have cheese in them, just the sauce and the potatoes and a little bit of onion often. Having said that, the recipe I'm telling you about does have optional cheese in it because so many people have come to expect cheese in their scalloped potatoes. You can decide if you put it in or not. I'll tell you that I tend to not put it in at Easter. It's just the very, very creamy potatoes that goes so well with the ham and the eggs and I like some nice buttered carrots. So it's not in our usual

2:06Easter dinner. But if I'm making this recipe on like a different Sunday or regular weeknight, I will quite often add the cheese you know me. There's cheese and just about everything, right? Okay, before I dive into the recipe, I'm just going to tell you a couple of important things, the kind of potato that you use. So for scalloped potatoes, you want a potato that's more of an all-purpose potato rather than a very starchy or waxy potato. And that's just so that they are a nice contender from cooking, but hold their shape. So the best potato to use is a Yukon gold potato. You could use a red potato, but then you have the non-traditional red color in your scalloped potatoes unless you peel them, which you know you don't have to. If you use the Yukon gold, the peels are nice and thin and they're just perfect. If you have a starchy or potato like a standard baking potato, like a russet, you can use those. I would peel those first and just know that they might fall apart more in the sauce. They might not hold their round scalloped shape,

3:08right? You want that nice fan scalloped kind of thing going on. You might not get that quite as clearly if you're using a starchy or potato like the russet. And that'll also say the recipe calls for whole milk. That is the best thing to use here because the potato dish is going to be in the oven for a long time, in the heat, and it can curdle, and it's more likely to curdle if you're using a lower fat milk. So go in with the whole milk or even whole milk and cream will work, but don't go with your fat free or 2% milk. Okay, let's dive into this recipe. You're going to preheat the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit and then you're going to grease a baking dish. You either want to use an 8 by 8 inch square baking dish or a shallow two quart casserole. And I'm just going to say this serves six people as a side dish if you're having like a large meal and you have other things happening in the dinner. So then you are doing a medium skillet. You want a medium skillet over medium heat and you are melting three tablespoons of butter into there. Once it's melted,

4:13you add a small onion about half a cup of chopped onion into there and cook stir occasionally until it's softened. Then add a teaspoon of salt, a quarter teaspoon of garlic powder, and an eighth of a teaspoon of black pepper. And if you want to, you can do a little pinch of cayenne or paprika or both. And I don't usually add that in. It doesn't feel very traditional to me, but it does taste good. So you know, go whichever way you want to go there. So you've added your seasonings and then you stir that and then add three tablespoons of all-purpose flour and stir that in to distribute it. Then while you continue to stir continuously, you're slowly drizzling in one and a half cups of milk. Now I'm going to tell you that your sauce is not going to seem like you have enough. You're going to think there's not enough sauce here, but the potatoes release water as they cook and mix with the sauce and it makes just the perfect amount. So it's not super saucy, just lightly coated. Having said that, if you like a saucier-scalped potato, you can go in with two cups of milk at this stage instead of the one and a half and it will work perfectly, okay?

5:18So you've slowly stirred in the milk and then you just let it cook for another like 30 seconds while you're stirring it and then take it off the heat. Okay, then you get that greased baking dish that you have there and you have your potatoes in one eighth of an inch slices. That's like thick enough that you do have to like bite through them. They're not like a wafer thin or anything like that, but not so thick that they're going to take forever to cook. I use my hand just like a knife, two sliced these, but you can use a mandolin slicer if you have one. So you've sliced two pounds of potatoes. You've sliced them at eighth of an inch thick. If they were the Yukon Gold, you did not peel them. If they were a russet potato, you did peel them and then you're doing half the potatoes in an overlapping layer in the bottom of your baking dish. You want that nice fan pattern. Then sprinkle that lightly with salt and pepper and then drizzle half the sauce over the potatoes. Again, you're not going to think it's enough, but it is enough. Just drizzle it over there and spread it a little bit. Don't worry if it's not very spread out because it's going to heat up and mix with the water from the potatoes and that will cause it to spread. Now, if you are

6:22using cheese, you're going to sprinkle a cup of shredded cheddar cheese over that right now. And if you're not using cheese, don't sprinkle cheese on top there and then you're going to do the second half of the potatoes in an overlapping layer over top and sprinkle that lightly with salt and pepper and then top with the remaining sauce. Again, drizzle it over there. It's not going to cover it totally. That is fine. Don't add any more cheese at this point. Then you cover it tightly with aluminum foil and bake it at 375 degrees Fahrenheit for one hour. Then take the foil off and you're going to bake it uncovered until the potatoes are fork tender and the top is lightly browned. It's going to be about 25 to 30 more minutes. If you are using the cheese, you sprinkle another cup of cheese on top at this point and then just put it back in the oven for like five minutes to melt the cheese. If you're not adding cheese, you do not need to put it back in the oven. If you want it browner, you can stick it under the broiler just for a moment, just a brown a little bit. That is an option that you can do as well. Then take the casserole out of the oven

7:22and let it rest for 10 minutes. It's just going to set up a little bit. The sauce will stop bubbling and being so liquidy, kind of set up and get a little thicker. Then it's ready to serve. It is wonderful with ham, a great choice for Easter. I will link to my recipe for how to bake ham perfectly. I have a spiral cut ham recipe and a boneless ham that's not been spiral cut recipe and I have some glazes too. I will link to those of the shownotes for you. You will have the perfect Easter dinner and I of course will put the link to the scallop potatoes in the shownotes for this podcast episode or you can head to cookthestory.com slash ROTD and get it there. Everything there is arranged by date, so it's helpful to know that today is March 12th of 2026. I'm Christine Pitman from cookthestory.com, thecookful.com, cookfortwo.us and this podcast recipe of the day, I hope you have a great day. Let's get cooking.