Muffin-Pan Potato Gratins | Cheddar Cheese and Bacon

Try these awesome Potato Gratins with your next Feast!

This is a ridiculously easy, and incredibly delicious take on potato au gratin that will have you making these tasty potato muffins all the time.

I made them every day for a week after adapting this recipe from one of my favorite food bloggers, Witty in the City.

I tried a number of different combinations, one of which I’ll share here using classic cheddar and bacon. Potato, bacon and cheddar, really can’t go wrong with that, and you probably have it laying around unlike something like Gruyère. Any favorite cheese here will do, my wife suggested a goat cheese version which is on the horizon.

You will need a regular sized muffin pan, and a mandolin for getting nice even slices of potato (optional).

I will go through some of the other combinations at the end of the post, but let’s get started and preheat the oven right away to 400 degrees because by the time it is up to temperature these awesome potato muffins will be ready to go in.

Ingredients

One decent sized potato
1/2 cup of cheddar cheese
3 slices of bacon
1 tablespoon of heavy cream per potato muffin
sour cream (optional but really compliments the finished product)
some scallion for garish (optional)
salt
pepper
knife,fork (optional)

Get Prepped

Cook the bacon ahead of time
Grate the cheese
Slice one potato into thin even slices
Spray some non-stick spray stuff into around each muffin cup

Get cooking!

Layer 2 slices of potato on the bottom of each muffin cup. Season them with a little salt and pepper and pinch a little cheese on the top, not too much or the cheese my overwhelm the potato. Also the bacon will add saltiness so one round I did not season and it tasted just fine.

Repeat this process until you have reached the top of the muffin pan. Finally spread some bacon bit awesomeness on the top of each one, and pour a tablespoon of the heavy cream into each cup. If you use too much bacon you might not ever eat a potato any other way.

Here is a picture of them after about 15 minutes cooking, this was my first attempt and I needed to add a little more cheese on top. Depending on your oven these should take between 25-35 minutes. You can see by the picture I HAD to test one which revealed some of the inner layers of potato needed more cooking.

What do you use these awesome things with?

I can’t imagine there is anything these potato gratin things can’t go with and fail.

Here I marinated and grilled a steak and they complimented it perfectly.

The next day I had a few leftover (very difficult!) and they went great with some eggs benedict.

The End

Other combinations I am still working on:
A slice of cooked sausage in the middle of the stack
A slice of provolone in the middle
A big piece of pork belly in the middle
A slice of zucchini in the middle, or when my fresh zucchini from the garden is ready, add to that stuffed zucchini flowers which I will post a recipe when they come in this summer.
Also since I buy very local honey and maple syrup I was thinking of a drizzle in the middle for a pancake breakfast combination, it should glaze and might be interesting. I will post an update on this…