Most people have a potato bake ‘go-to’ recipe, eh? Not me, my efforts are always slightly different and TBH always a bit ‘meh’. However, I’ve nailed it: This is the potato and bacon bakes of All Potato Bake recipes. I could eat this for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and I’m not even a massive potato fan (apart from chips… #nuffsaid). In the midst of a cold Rotorua winter, danger: For me, this is comfort food at its finest.
Hang on, if you are calorie counting, stop right here. Exit out of this blog. This dish is totes not conducive to weight-loss, in fact hubby said to me, and I quote “Shit, we’d better not eat this too often we’ll get fat’. In our house, hence, we call this ‘Full Noise Potato Bake’.
Firstly, as a bit of a disclaimer, the origins of this recipe don’t like with me, nope. They lie with my buddy Portia. We went to her house for dinner a few weeks back and she dished up her version of this. I asked nagged her for the recipe, as it was WAYYYY better than my potato bake. Finally she relented and shared the secret. The two secrets are, incidentally:
- Dried Maggi Chicken Soup (you know, the one that comes in the packet, like the crucial Kiwi Dip ingredient, Maggi Onion Soup). Now, I’m not usually a fan or a supporter of pre-packaged foods, but I’m not so LANA* about it that I can’t make an exception.
- Par boiling the potatoes. My potato bake efforts have yielded dishes with semi-hard potato. Meh. Nobody likes it semi hard.
The next day after Portia wowed us, which was a Sunday, we all had a hankering for Portia Potato Bake. The hankering was so bad that, in the torrential rain I set off to Countdown on a mission for Chicken Soup and potatoes (cupboards were bare). Me being me, I had a fiddle with Portia’s recipe and this was the result. I nailed it, if I do say so myself: It’s same, same, but different, to Portia’s Potato Bake. The addition of bacon and onion knocked it out of the ballpark, IMO.
Potato and Bacon Bake Recipe
Alright, enough talk, here’s the recipe.
Ingredients
- 6 medium sized potatoes (potatoes suitable for baking), sliced into 5mm rounds
- 4 rashers of bacon (I used streaky), diced
- 1/2 brown onion, finely sliced
- 375ml cream
- 1 packet dried Maggi Chicken Soup
- 2 cloves garlic, crushed
- 1/4 teaspoon chicken salt (normal salt will suffice!)
- Freshly ground black pepper
- 20g butter (approx)
- 1 cup grated cheese (Iused colby)
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 180 degrees (normal bake).
- Pre-cook the spuds: Bring a large pan of water to boil, then boil the potato slices for 5 minutes. Drain. Leave to cool slightly (so you can 'handle' them).
- While you wait for the spuds, grease a large casserole dish (I used a medium sized lasanga dish, about 6 cup capacity).
- Pan fry the bacon rashers until just cooked.
- Layer the potato, onion and bacon in the prepared dish.
- In a large jug, whisk together: Cream, garlic, chicken stock, salt and a few grinds of fresh black pepper. Pour evenly over potato mixture. Dot the butter over the top.
- Bake in preheated oven for 45 minutes Remove from oven, sprinkle with grated cheese. Bake for a further 15 minutes, uncovered, until cheese is melted and golden and everything is bubbling.
- Remove from oven and serve as a side dish - or as a meal in itself with a side salad - YUMMO!
*Who is LANA? Read it backwards… 🙂
