I MADE THIS
A week or so ago, and the family Loved it! And so did I! I did change up a few things in the recipe when I made it though. Serving a family of 5, and especially My family, 8 slices of bacon just wouldn't cut it. So I bought a package of Wright Bacon and cut every slice in half, then cooked all the halves. I started the process of doing this (on the stove) about the time I put the potatoes in the oven. Keep the bacon soft, but not too soft. It needs to be cooked, but not crunchy.
Then when I finished cooking all the halves I started making the crumbles of bacon. You can do this with a knife or with your hands, but make sure your hands are clean! This was fairly easy to do, but it was pretty time consuming. By the time the bacon was finished, so were the potatoes. Luckily, and I was quite thankful to past me for being bored and deciding to start prepping ingredients,...
I had the cheese and scallions all prepared, but I didn't use any cream cheese and it still came out just fine. I bought a large, I think 8lb bag of preshredded cheese. Having been my first time making this, I wasn't sure I'd have enough so I overachieved, which turned out to be a good thing. I had the scallions chopped up, and mind you they should probably be pretty thin, and the cheese separated into two baggies. One for the inside of the casserole and one for the topping. I put in the baggies what the recipe called for and a little more. Maybe a handful more for inside the casserole (and a handful can mean whatever you want it to mean) and 1/3 cup more in for the topping. (After all, even if that wasn't enough, I had left over cheese, right?) So I let the potatoes chill out on the stove to cool for just a few minutes, then started the process of making them into a casserole. I did forget the salt and pepper, so I'd suggest putting it in the potatoes with the butter and sour cream. AND if you have any picky eaters in your household, who don't like sour cream you can substitute the sour cream with a little more butter or a couple of table spoons of cream. (Heavy Whipping cream would work fine). To do this, prepare your potatoes after they've been baked and put in the amount of butter the recipe calls for. Then use a potato masher to get the potatoes fluffy. Add a tablespoon of cream if you want it softer and fluffier. Take out half of the potatos and place them in a seperate bowl. Then to one half of your mixture add your sour cream. I added the full quantity of sour cream, but you don't have to if you don't want to. Then to the other half add half the quantity of butter listed on the recipe. If you don't want to add that much butter, substitute in with cream instead, but use about 1/3 or less of the cream compared to the quantity called for of sour cream. Then add in half the quantity of milk to both bowls and mix it together to form a fluffy and thick potato casserole. From there, take half the quantity of scallions and cheese for the inside of the casserole and add to each bowl and mix it together.
I used One casserole dish for this and lined it with some aluminum foil with a little bit of it folded at the middle to create a barrier for each half. You don't have to do this you can use two casserole pans or you can make two quantities of the entire recipe and do half and half in two dishes. Once you've lined your pan with the foil spray the sides with some non-stick baking spray (You can use a butter flavored spray with this, and it will work just fine.), then top the entire casserole with the topping cheese. If you grated your cheese, you might not have as much as I did on top, but it will still taste just as good. Before I stuck it into the oven I added a sprinkle of garlic salt right over the top of the entire casserole just to give it a little extra flavor. You can make this however you like or for as many people as you like, but just experiment to find the way that works best for you.
The single recipe with no alterations yields 8 servings. The recipe I made with alterations had about 6-8 servings. If you have a hungry family I definitely suggest buying a 10lb bag of potatoes and making a double recipe. The prep time should still be about the same unless you have to do one tray of potatoes at a time. You can have many of your ingredients prepared the day before so actually mixing it and prepping it for cooking won't take as long as if you had to run back and forth gathering ingredients.
I hope you enjoy this recipe as much as we did, and I hope you have more patience than I do when it comes to making bacon on a stove! Happy holidays you guys, and I'll see you all later!
