Cheesy Scalloped Potatoes

On most days, part of my commute home from work includes stopping in at Trader Joe's to pick myself up with a free sample (my favorite so far has just been the simple combination of crackers and cheese, interestingly), and during the Thanksgiving season, one of the samples I had the honor of trying was their Scalloped Potatoes with Quattro Formaggio. Needless to say, it was delicious and I needed to create a cheese-filled potato dish asap.

This definitely is no where near a copy-cat recipe due to the different cheeses, but it is a delicious dish of starches and fats, nonetheless.

Ingredients

• 2 pounds of potatoes
• 1/4 cup butter
• 1/4 cup flour
• 16oz carton of whipping cream
• 2 cups of shredded cheese + some extra to sprinkle on top if you are so inclined--i went with a mix of extra sharp cheddar, parmesan, and romano
• salt + pepper
• paprika

Methodology

Preheat the oven to 350F. Or in my case, do this step the next day since I was making this the night before a friendsgiving dinner.

On the stovetop, melt the butter. We are going to start off by making the roux for our cheese sauce.

A roux is a combination of butter and flour that you brown a bit, and it mixes together into a smushy doughy substance. Milk or cream is then added, and the roux helps turn that into a thick sauce.

Dump in the flour once the butter has melted. At this point, you are going to want to keep this mixture moving with a spatula or wooden spoon.

Our goal is the brown the mixture, but not burn it. Give it a few minutes to make sure that the flour is thoroughly cooked through.

Get the SO to do the mixing while you take blurry pictures.

Brown!

Add in the whipping cream and continue mixing.

Once the mixture starts to thicken, add in the cheese and mix and melt.

Add salt and pepper to taste, and then yum. You have a great cheese sauce to toss on mac and cheese or potatoes or just eat straight with a spoon if you're a monster like me.

While, during, or before the whole cheese sauce is going, wash the potatoes and boil them for 20-25 minutes. The potatoes will be mostly cooked through, but not totally since we're still popping them into the oven at the end.

Make sure to keep the peel on so the potatoes don't turn into mush. Though I'm sure they still would be delicious that way.

When boiled, remove potatoes from the heat and peel them.

Cut them into 1/4-inch thick slices.

Line a baking dish. Add salt and pepper on top.

Continue to peel/cut/line until you finish a layer.

Add a layer of cheese sauce.

Repeat the layers of potatoes and cheese until you run out of cheese sauce and can end with that on top.

Add paprika.

Add the extra shredded cheese to ensure that ooey-gooey goodness is present.

Bake away for 20 minutes.

I kept mine in the fridge overnight, so I ended up doing a total of 40 minutes.

Results

After friendsgiving, we returned home with a completely cleared dish, so I would say this was a success!

It was interesting because the cheese sauce was really good with the potatoes when I made them at night, but after sitting in the fridge and getting baked the next day, I feel like some of the cheese flavor faded. I might add more cheese next time and try a fancier combination of them.