Recipe for Easy Scalloped Potatoes

Ingredients:

Notes and Substitutions:

• Cream of mushroom soup: as far as I'm concerned the very best-tasting soup is made by Campbell's. But this is what my mom used, so I may be prejudiced here.
• Milk: you can make this recipe less caloric by using skim milk, or richer-tasting by using whole milk, or even light cream.
• Salt: since condensed soups are usually quite high in salt content, you probably don't need to add any salt at all.

Directions:

1. Find a baking dish with a cover. Make sure it's big enough that there is still a good, large space between the topmost layer of potatoes and the rim of the baking dish. You don't want the milk to boil over the side of the dish.
   Don't use a metal pan. This gives the potatoes a (surprise!) metallic taste. Glass or oven-safe ceramic dishes are best. If you don't own one that has a cover, you can cover any oven-safe dish with aluminum foil.
2. Preheat oven to 325℉ (165℃).
3. Open can of condensed cream of mushroom soup and spread half of can in bottom of baking dish. Retain the rest for the top.
4. Wash and scrub the potatoes very well. Cut off bruised or bad bits. (If you do this, you don't need to peel the potatoes. They taste just as good with the peels, they have more vitamins, and it takes less time to prepare them.)
5. Slice the potatoes as thin as you can stand it. Place a layer of potatoes in the baking dish (on top of the condensed soup).
6. Peel and slice the onion. Place a layer of onion in the baking dish.
7. Continue layering the potatoes and onions. You will probabably run out of onion first, but that doesn't matter. As long as it's all in the dish, that's just fine.
8. After you've made this dish once or twice, you'll realize whether or not you want to add pepper (to "zip" it up) and salt. I don't, but some people like the additional spicing. If so, it's most effective to lightly salt and pepper the potatoes as you layer them.
9. Spread or dot the remaining cream of mushroom soup over the topmost layer of potatoes.
10. Add enough milk to just cover the potatoes.
11. Cover baking dish and place in oven for 60 minutes.
12. Remove cover. Bake for another 30 minutes.

Disclaimer: while these hints are the result of years of experience and/or lots of research, in the end they are just my personal opinion. If you try something I suggest and it doesn't work, please don't sue me &mdash I guarantee nothing. Best of luck!

Page created and maintained by A. Steinbergs

Last modified: September 24, 2008