A Smarter Way to Make Au Gratin Potatoes

Au gratin potatoes

We love a smart and simple recipe upgrade. Small tweaks to classic dishes (using mayo instead of butter for grilled cheese, baking your salmon with miso, mixing butter into your jarred pasta sauce) can really elevate your home cooking game.

And one of our favorite recent recipe upgrades came from Nicole Keshishian Modic, aka @kalejunkie. Modic often shares smart tips and delicious-looking recipes, but it seems that her potato recipes often catch our eye. We're already fans of her crispy Parmesan-crusted potatoes and now we've got our eye on her sheet pan potato au gratin.

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What Are Sheet Pan Potatoes Au Gratin?

In her video, Modic swaps out the classic deep baking dish for a sheet pan. She layers sliced potatoes, grated cheese (cheddar, Parmesan and gruyere!) and a garlicky cheese sauce mixture on the sheet pan, then sticks it in the oven to bake. When it emerges, the top is golden brown and crispy. Need we say more?

Related: Wait, What's the Difference Between Scalloped Potatoes and Potatoes Au Gratin?

What's So Great About Sheet Pan Potatoes Au Gratin?

I think we can answer this in three words: more crispy edges! Building the dish in a sheet pan instead of a baking dish creates more surface area, which means that you have more crispy top pieces than you would normally have. There's enough depth to provide some tender cheesy potatoes too, but everyone can now have crispy bits as well. And we all know that's the absolute best part of a cheesy potato dish.

The other great thing is pretty much everyone has a sheet pan, but you might not have a casserole dish handy, particularly if you're cooking lots of other casserole-y things for Easter.

It's the perfect side dish for ham or lamb, but it's also a good recipe to keep around for cozy dinner parties and other holiday meals. We're definitely bookmarking it for Thanksgiving and Christmas this year, because it's never too early to start planning and you can never have too many cheesy potato recipes, right?

Up next: My Husband Cracked the Code to the Best-Ever Roasted Carrots