Our Favorite Cheesy Potatoes Recipe

I shared a lot of photos on Instagram since Christmas, but the one that received the most love featured potatoes.

Party potatoes, Funeral potatoes, Football potatoes, Pittsburgh potatoes, Crunchy potatoes, Corn Flake potatoes, and, my personal favorite, Cheesy Potatoes. This casserole goes by many names which really suggests that there is no bad time to make these potatoes.

This casserole makes an appearance at every one of our family’s Easter meals. My mom used to be the bearer of the party potatoes. I remember popping bags of frozen has browns and dumping them into our big, plastic popcorn bowl. The potatoes, sour cream, cheese, and cream of chicken soup created such a thick mass, that I always handed the spoon over to mom to finish mixing. My Godmother’s taken over the honors.

I’ll never forget the first time my friend Donna first encountered cheesy potatoes. She grew up in South Florida and resides in North Iowa, where we met a few years ago. All of us who attended this potluck were stunned when we found out had never eaten cheesy potatoes. We dropped everything and stared intently while she took her first bites. She probably found the situation as strange as we did.

An aunt’s version using shredded hashbrowns.

“But why would you use corn flake crumbs?” someone once asked me. “Whole corn flakes would be so much crunchier!”

She may be right, but mom used corn flake crumbs, so I do, too. There’s really no other reason. You can purchase corn flake crumbs, now, but back then, I used to crush them with a rolling pin. My cousin and I used to bicker over the leftovers. The rule was that whoever was a college student at that time took home the most. In hindsight, this seems fair. You should make extra and have a contingency plan for divvying up the leftovers.

Cheesy Potatoes
My mom hated onions and substituted dehydrated onto flakes instead for a subtler flavor. I think the real, chopped onion taste better. The original recipe also calls for margarine. We prefer butter. 

Ingredients:
2 lb. package of hash browns, the cubed kind (some people use shredded)
1 can of cream of chicken soup
Scant teaspoon of salt and pepper, to taste
1/2 cup chopped onion
8 oz sour cream
8 oz. grated cheddar cheese.
2 cups corn flake crumbs
1/2 stick of melted butter

Instructions:

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
• Combine hash browns, chicken soup, salt, pepper, onion, sour cream and cheese. Place not a large baking dish.
• Top evenly with corn flake crumbs. Drizzle with melted butter.
• Bake for 45-minutes or until hot and bubbly.