Cooking with Betty Crackpot: Scalloped Potatoes

This is my first time making scalloped potatoes, which is kind of pathetic at my age. I love this classic side dish, but for some reason it always seemed like too much for one person. Now that I live with two other people, maybe I'll make them more often. I decided to make them for tonight's Easter dinner, which was not ham. My roommate sprung for gigantic T-bone steaks, which we had with roasted asparagus and a decadent flourless chocolate cake that I'll get to in a future post.

Betty has two scalloped potato recipes, this one and a creamy version, for which you make a white sauce. This one below seemed simpler to make and it's what I recall my mom making. Mom used to, I believe, slice the potatoes in a food processor. I did mine by hand, and I also didn't peel the potatoes first since I like the peels and that's where most of the nutrients are.

Scalloped Potatoes, Betty Crocker's Cookbook, page 435

2 lbs potatoes (about 6 medium)
1/4 cup finely chopped onion
3 tbsp flour
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
1/4 cup butter or margarine
2 1/2 cups milk

Heat oven to 350F. Wash potatoes; pare thinly and remove eyes. Cut potatoes into thin slices to measure about 4 cups.

In greased 2 quart casserole, arrange potatoes in 4 layers, sprinkling each of the first 3 layers with 1 tbsp onion, 1 tbsp flour, 1/4 tsp salt, dash pepper, and dotting each with 1 tbsp of butter. Sprinkle top with remaining onion, salt and pepper, and dot with remaining butter. Heat milk to just scalding; pour over potatoes. Cover; bake 30 minutes. Uncover; bake 60 to 70 minutes longer or until potatoes are tender. let stand 5 - 10 minutes before serving. 4 - 6 servings.


I also didn't finely chop any onion; rather, I did it my mom's way and finely sliced a whole small onion and added it to the layers of potato. I didn't get 4 layers out of mine, but only 3, probably because I used a slightly smaller casserole dish than what was called for. Also, I specially went and bought homo milk (3.25%) for this recipe as I was pretty sure my usual 1% wouldn't work so well.


I baked the dish on a cookie sheet lined with one of my silicone baking mats, and that was a good call because there was some overflow during the baking process. The top layer of potatoes got a little dry & crisp, but that wasn't necessarily a bad thing.

The verdict: delicious and successful! I will definitely make this again because it was really good. I don't know why I put this off as long as I did!