welcome friends welcome back to the
kitchen since the
start of the pandemic i've had a lot of
people asking if i could do recipes
using these dried mashed potatoes
and this isn't something that i use
often or regularly
now but in the past this is something
that i used all the time
there was a time way back when julie and
i were in university
that we worked in northern ontario for
pulp and paper companies
and we would spend the summer out in the
bush
at the far end of the road far away from
everyone
um and we would spend four five months
of the year
living in a tent going from spot to spot
to spot and we were
we were checking cutovers to make sure
that the trees that have been planted
were doing okay
four or five months in a tent you'd only
get to town
maybe every two weeks and when you got
to town you would have to buy everything
that you needed to eat
for two weeks out in the bush and we
didn't have refrigeration
we didn't have an oven we would just
have a camp stove or a campfire
and so a lot of what we would make had
to come from a box had to be dried it
had to be shelf stable
or some stuff we could freeze and freeze
hard or we would ask
the uh the grocery store to freeze and
freeze hard for so that we could take it
and keep it for two or three days out in
the bush before we had to eat it
and so this is a dish that worked out
reasonably well
because you can wax eggs and keep them
for a long time
at room temperature and bacon is
something that if you buy the right kind
of
salt pork it keeps at room temperature
as well
so in this pan i've got some bacon and i
just want to fry it off until it's crisp
render out the fat
in this bowl i have put the dried mashed
potatoes
and to that i'm going to add this is all
dried stuff
i have garlic powder i have onion powder
dried onion powder salt
and thyme
and i'm just going to mix that together
and so you're probably asking yourself
what does this guy living in a tent for
four months have to do
with the current pandemic and really
what it comes down to is
most of what's in this is shelf stable
it's relatively easy to keep in your
pantry dried herbs dried spices
dried potatoes bacon keeps really well
in your freezer
the only only oddballs here are the eggs
and the cheese
and again eggs will keep in your fridge
for quite some time
and if you wax them they will keep
almost forever
cheese bit of a wild card i know that my
grandparents
um cheddar cheese sat on their dining
room table it never went into the fridge
they'd buy it
and it would stay out on the counter
until they had completely eaten it
now once i've got the water mixed in
i'm just going to take a little bit of
the
bacon grease and put that in as well
and then crack in two eggs
and then mix the eggs and get them mixed
in completely with the rest of the
potatoes
once the egg is mixed in i'm gonna grate
this
cheddar you could use any cheese that
you want i kind of really like cheddar
but
if you want something that is a little
bit
tangier go right ahead or even something
that is meltier like
mozzarella would work perfectly too
so while i'm making this i don't
remember exactly where this recipe came
from but i'm
you know 100 positive that at some point
uh in the late 1980s this recipe was
probably on the box
probably on the box and it's kind of
funny because uh
i read a study recently where people had
asked about
family death bed confessions about you
know
super secret recipes that a family
member has
and in almost every case
the super secret family recipe came from
the side of
a box either the container that the
chocolate chips came in or you know
something like that
and people were so relieved that they
could finally tell their family members
that
they hadn't come up with the recipe
there's nothing super secret about it
it's just on the box which i thought was
a very interesting study
a lot of people have those secret family
recipes now
once the cheese is mixed in i
am going to put about half of this bacon
and a little bit more of the bacon
grease in
i'm going to save some of the bacon to
dress onto the top of the casserole dish
and i am going to cook this in the oven
out in the bush
we would have cooked that in a cast iron
pan on the side of a fire with a little
bit of a cover over it
just because you do what you've got to
do and i think now with the pandemic
we're sort of in the
same same space do what you got to do
make some decent food um stay positive
okay that's looking pretty good now oh
black pepper almost forgot
how could i forget the pepper crack in
some pepper
one last stir
and into
a casserole dish
now i'm going to put this in the oven we
don't really need to cook it
really we're just melting the cheese
into the potatoes
okay
and spread some of this bacon on the top
[Music]
okay so i'm gonna put just a little bit
of
pepper on top just for good measure
because i don't know that i got enough
since i forgot it i'm going to put some
on top i'm going to put this into the
oven
uh 20 30 minutes moderate oven about 350
degrees
if you wanted to you could have held
back some of that uh that grated cheese
or you could come up with some other
grated cheese
to put on in like the last five minutes
and get a nice bubbly crispy top
see in a little while okay this looks
pretty good hey jules hey glenn
hey friends so uh
cheesy bacon potato casserole thing
cheesy bacon potato casserole thing that
sounds like it's got all the right
ingredients
it does have all the right ingredients
let's uh let's give it a go
careful it's hot
so it tastes pretty good it's got a a
very standard consistency though like
how did you make it so that it's not
lumpy it is the dried potatoes
okay that's dried potato flour okay and
other than that that
a little bit of different consistency to
a regular mashed potato yeah
you'd never know i was like there's no
there's no you know yeah
you haven't now that being said that's
because we don't beat the crap out of
our potatoes
we don't so i know a lot of people
really whip their potatoes like with a
with a
with a hand mixer or i pretty much just
crush them with a fork
and that's mashed potatoes to me yeah so
i think this is really good i like the
flavors in this
i mean you did put bacon and cheese in
it i mean you can kind of
make almost everything great with some
bacon and cheese and so
i mean really dry potato flakes dry
spices dry garlic dry onion
bacon is something that you can keep in
the freezer all of these things are
staples that you can keep
in your house for an extended period of
time
if you can't get out to the store and
you're worried about having something
in your house you know because who knows
what's happening out there
there's a dumpster fire happening out
there there are moments there are
moments
and i will say it i mean it's certainly
a staple when i go camping and commuting
so
i have a friend who actually really
looks forward to canoeing because we get
to eat
because you get to eat these potatoes
yeah yeah
i see nothing wrong with this what made
you think there'd be something wrong
with it well no there isn't anything
wrong with it but i know that
food people poopoo the idea of dry
potato flakes
but they are there is so much that you
can do with them
and really it's just freeze-dried potato
yeah it's not you know
this is fantastic as you can tell i can
just yours is almost gone keep shoving
it in my mouth
in that case so this is a this is a
great thing
if you're worried about your pandemic
pantry if you're worried about having
pantry staples that will keep for a long
time
that you can use at any moment you can
dress them up make them your own
i know they don't have to be you know
the boring thing that just comes out the
box
change the spicing change the cheese
maybe put some ham instead of bacon
maybe something else
thanks for stopping by see you again
soon
you