Mashed Potato and Ham Casserole Recipe

Hi I am Betty; welcome to Betty’s kitchen, tonight we are making a Mashed Potato Casserole. And it is very too easy to make that you found that it is an interesting and elegant casserole. That you can serve with almost anything, we will be serving it with Scarborough Fair Boneless Pork Chops. So if you are interested in that menu, look for it and you will see a serving both together.

We will start out with some boiling water; I have two cups of brambly boiling water. And I am going to put some instant mashed potatoes in there. Now this make approximately two cups because you have two cups of boiling water actually I use always use a little bit more than two cups. Because sometimes it taste a little stiff and I like them a little or branny so we are going to just sprinkle this in and stir. And truthfully this is meant for leftover mashed potatoes and I didn’t have any leftover mashed potatoes. But when I do, so this makes it perfect casserole to use of those leftover mashed potatoes but it also can be a convenience food for you. Because you don’t have to make those mashed potatoes if you don’t want to, you can have mashed potatoes this easily and this quickly.

You just - for this particular brand it is just boiled water, combined it with the mix here and stir. Now I think they also say that sit for about five minutes and fluff with a fork. Well we are not going to do that we are going to go ahead and add some things to it. One thing we are going to add to it is cheddar cheese. This is three quarters of a cup, 3/4 cup of shredded cheddar cheese. I will just put all of these in there and then stir them all around. I am going to add 1/2 cup of sour cream, now any of these cheeses or sour creams things like that, you can get reduced fat if you like our fat free. This time I am just using regular but I will substitute there that this is regular.

I have 1/2 cup that was 1/2 cup sour cream, I have 1/2 cup of chopped onion tops. So these are the green parts of the onion, 1/2 cup that I want to slip in there. And then quite often and then quite often I might put chopped bacon in here; I thought that tonight we will put something a little more interesting in. And that would be tender chopped ham, makes a little heartier and actually I am using one of these cans which are five ounces. And if you want to be this more of a one dish meal, then you can add two cans. And it would be a casserole that is meat and potato instead of potato and meat. But this is in a place of bacon or something like that. But it just gives you a really great flavor and I thin you will love it.

So I am going to stir that in and you can see this is coming together and we just stir the mashed potatoes, the sour cream, the cheddar cheese, the green onions and that good tender chunk ham. Actually it is very hammy so you really wouldn’t probably want to put much more ham than that unless you just want to make sure you get your entrée included with your potatoes. Now pour this into a prepared baking dish, I have a Pyrex dish here it is like that tin and I have spread it with canola oil. So I am just going to spread this out and it kind of heavy actually.

Try to get all of that and there we go, so I want this to go to all corners and size. And then we will be baking it in the oven and I have one more thing to add to it. You could ground some pepper if you like to do that - that is just kind of a few, I don’t think that I will do that with this one. It does that need salt because your pre-package potatoes are salted and if you have leftover mashed potatoes, they would be salted and just put in salt in the ham. So when you get it ready, at this point then take a 1/2 of a stick of butter melted and then pour it evenly on the top. So just kind of to make that spiral motion if you want and get that spread out. That has just some flavor and also makes it nice and crusty on the top.

So now this is going in to the oven along with our pork chops that are already there. I forget to turn it up and I have them cooking at 3 degrees. That is going to be fine for this; I might have put it in at 400 degrees if I have not something else that I am dealing with. But this is going to cook not too long maybe 20 minutes or so. I will let you know the time on it when I bring it out that it is going it the oven right beside on our pork chops. And we will just let that bake until it is nice and brown and crispy on top and it is going to be a wonderful side dish for our Scarborough Fair Pork Chops.

Our Mashed Potato Casserole is done and we check in here in the oven and bring it out - we will take a look at it. And just place it right here and you can see that it turns nice golden shade on the top. It is nice and bubbly and the texture is very nice, it is kind of like the inside of the baked potato only it is more liquid. It got all those good flavors and spices, so that is our Mashed Potato Casserole, our Scarborough Fair Boneless Pork Chops are done. And I have been watching them and I have cooked them for 35 minutes a nice and brown sizzling in the oven. So I am bringing those out and turn the oven off and placing them right here.

You could see that I have it right beside our potatoes that we will go to serve them with. Now let me go around here and get a serving plate and just pick on of this. By the way I did have extra crumbs so I put extra crumbs over the top and I have extra melted margarine. So I put that on the top, you do not have to use this many crumbs as I said, I said maybe third of a box is planted. So let make sure it is done by cutting in the center, you want to see white meat, if you see anything pink then it has to go back. But this is fine and then by this I will serve some of our Mashed Potato Casserole, it is nice and steaming and hot from the oven. Those chunks of ham in there are going to be good and I got my glass of iced tea and if I had a nice green vegetable and some bread. I will be all set but this is a good start.