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This was the other side dish we wanted to serve with dinner. I used the word ‘was’ because everything did not go as well as expected. We wanted to make a potato dish with the beef but we did not want to make the regular mashed variety. Then one night while watching Food Network, Paula Deen and Robert Irvine made this potato dish that looked awesome with the presentation. When Robert said the name of the potato, we knew what our potato dish would be on the holiday table. First, the recipe. Then, how we worked around our issues.

The recipe we took was the Emeril version, since from the looks of responses, it is the better of the 2. The recipe can be found by clicking here.

Hasselback Potatoes by Emeril

2 small baking potatoes, about 3/4-pound total
2 tablespoons melted butter
1/3 cup chicken stock
1/4 teaspoon chopped fresh thyme leaves
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground white pepper
11/2 tablespoons finely grated hard cheese, such as Parmesan
1 tablespoon fine dry bread crumbs
Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F.
Peel potatoes. Cut each potato not quite through in a series of crosswise slices about 1/4-inch apart or closer so that they are still joined together at the bottom. Brush the potatoes with the melted butter and place in a small baking pan. Pour the chicken stock around the potatoes and sprinkle with the thyme leaves. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and roast until the potatoes are half cooked, 25 to 30 minutes, basting every 5 minutes with the butter-chicken stock mixture.

In a small bowl combine the grated cheese and bread crumbs and divide the mixture evenly between the tops of the 2 potatoes. Continue roasting without any further basting until the potatoes are crispy on the outside and cooked through, about 30 minutes.

*Note: Exact cooking time will depend on the size of the potatoes.

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That’s Emeril’s take on it. Here is what we did differently:

1) We thought we had chicken stock. We realized that we used the chicken stock to make the chicken soup. We had to improvise. We used instead the Ikea Swedish Meatball Cream Sauce from when we picked up our furniture from that palace. This would ultimately be the thing that made everyone fall in love with the potatoes.

2) We did not have bread crumbs. We didn’t really want them because we wanted to experiment with the Corn Flake Crumbs from Kelloggs®. Impact with this vs. your standard bread crumbs is still in debate.

3) We split the potatoes in half, then did the porcupine-like design of the potatoes. Joy believes this reduced the roasting time further. When we pulled them out of the oven after 20 minutes, they were perfect.

While we deviated slightly, the end result was still the same. It is a shame that the closest IKEA is a 30-minute drive, but we would definately serve these potatoes this way again more often. I hope that you try our variation as well, and if you do, please comment on how they turned out. Enjoy!