Baked Potato Casserole Topped with Crispy Onion Rings

This is one yummy casserole. It's pretty easy to make and also can be prepared ahead of time, which is what I did. You just pop it in the oven and it's ready in 30 minutes. A lot of times, I have time in the morning to cook, but because of activities the kids are in, no time to cook after 3 pm, so I like dishes that can be made ahead and that don't take an hour to bake.

The crispy onion rings are a bit of a pain to make (I hate cleaning up after deep frying), but pretty good. If I were in a hurry, I would either use those canned ones from the grocery store, or substitute chopped fresh chives after baking, which would also add some color.

You can use either baked potatoes or boiled. To save on time, I boiled mine, but I chopped them into 1" cubes before cooking them, rather than after, and I left the skins on so they'd taste more like baked potatoes.

I will say I was cursing Sara Foster earlier today when I realized that the 4 potatoes called for in the recipe were not nearly enough for this dish. Either there's a typo (did she mean 4 lbs of potatoes?) or the rest of the ingredients are way off (2 cups of half & half poured over 4 measly potatoes = potato soup): when I put what was supposed to be the first layer of potatoes in the 13x9 dish, it didn't even cover the bottom of the dish, so I dumped all the potatoes in (both layers worth) and it still didn't cover the bottom of the dish. I ended up cooking another batch of potatoes, which was really annoying. In the end, I used 9 medium russet potatoes, or about 3 lbs.

After I thought about it, I should have realized that there was no way that 4 potatoes could serve 8-10 people, even as a side dish. That's less than half a potato per person. Unless they grow some monster 1-lb potatoes in North Carolina, there's a typo in this recipe. Fortunately, it turned out so darn yummy that there are no hard feelings, Sara.