Cheese & potato pie has to rank up there with one of my favourite meals of all time. Mum would often bake us a cheese & potato pie when I was growing up – a heaving Pyrex casserole dish full of mashed potato and cheese, topped with cheddar and put into the oven to brown.
Well, sometimes life’s too short for browning! I often make microwave cheesy potato recipes, or cheesy mash as I call it when it’s done in the microwave, as a fast comfort food option. It’s exactly the same as a cheese & potato pie, without a brown and crisp topping, unless you then have a grill and can add cheese and brown it. This is a quicker version, made entirely in a microwave oven.
There are no real quantities involved – it’s all by eye really. Roughly speaking though, if you’ve a loose pile of grated cheddar cheese that’s half the size of a pile of mash, you’re pretty close. How much cheese you put into cheesy mash, or into any cheesy potato recipe really depends on personal taste and how much cheese you’ve got available!
This time I’ve added in some dehydrated fried onions and that really gave it a punch! So here’s my easy microwave cheesy potato recipe of the week 🙂
Ingredients:
- A pile of mash – I made my microwave mash by microwaving the potatoes and mashing them. Sometimes I don’t bother peeling them, but this time I did.
- A big pile of grated cheddar cheese – roughly half the volume/size of the pile of mash
- 2-3 tablespoons of dehydrated fried onions.
Method:
- Boil a kettle, put the dehydrated fried onions into a mug and fill it with water to hydrate them for just 2-3 minutes. If you wish, you can use a real onion (chop it into small pieces, add some oil and microwave it for 2-3 minutes in a microwave safe jug).
- Combine the mashed potato with the cheese and microwave them for 1-2 minutes on high.
- Remove the cheesy mash from the microwave and give it a stir around and to check if you think you’ve got enough cheese in there, add more cheese if you wish.
- Drain the onions and add them to the cheesy mash, giving it a good stir through.
- Add just a little more grated cheese to the top and replace it in the microwave for 1 min on high.
Serve!
At this point I could have browned the top under a hot grill for 3-4 minutes, I could’ve even added some tomato slices … but I was too hungry to bother with this.
I served my cheese & onion potato pie with baked beans. The amount I’d made was enough for two meals, so I boxed up half of my cheesy mash recipe and put it in the fridge – and ate it with the other half tin of beans the next day!
What Were the Food Cheat Ideas Here?
- Using dried fried onions means I have them instantly available to use in recipes, without the waiting/mess/smell.
- Using the microwave to heat this cheesy mash recipe up instead of oven baking it.
- Not bothering to grill the top until it’s brown, saving time.