Pour Cream Over Diced Potatoes For A Southern-Style Side (Hint: It's Not Gratin)

Cream and potatoes go together better than peanut butter and jelly, and with only a few extra fixings, you can get a seriously Southern-style side dish with very little effort. By just combining potatoes, seasoning, and cream, you get Creole potatoes, a rustic, flavorful recipe with tons of room for experimentation. Enter: Creole cream potatoes.

When it comes to Creole cooking, you'll often find some sort of vegetable gratin on the menu. However, whereas a standard gratin relies on a roux to thicken a cream sauce, this recipe keeps the sauce a bit thinner. Using Creole spice mix instead of Cajun is also quite important, as the higher ratio of herbs pairs perfectly with a bit of cheese, dairy fat, and tubers. While you still want a bit of spice, the parsley, oregano, thyme, and other woody herbs diffuse their flavorful oils into the sauce to then be absorbed by the potatoes.

Since you won't be able to taste this dish as you go, you may want to use a different kind of butter than your usual salted variety. Unsalted ones give you maximum control and, while potatoes do absorb sodium quite well, this is important so that you don't spend an hour baking a dish you later find unpalatable. Most of the baking time for this recipe calls for it to be covered, but don't forget a final few minutes uncovered or even under the broiler to crisp up a last layer of cheese and roast any exposed parts of the potatoes. A little crunch in a swimming rich sauce of cream? Yes, please.

When you're working with such a simple dish, there's always room to add new ingredients or try out new preparation methods. Whether you're picking out different potatoes for a new texture, finding the right balance of fat, or even tossing in some protein, it's hard to go wrong with something this straightforward.

If you like your sauce to be a bit thicker, something that clings to the vegetables, try using russet potatoes. Affordable and available most anywhere, these come loaded with starch but have very little moisture, making them perfect for baking with dairy. This same thing makes them the best variety of spud for scalloped potatoes as they're great at absorbing fat and keeping that flavor on your fork rather than pooling at the bottom of the dish. If you want to keep your sauce thin, aim for a waxier potato, like fingerlings, new potatoes, or any red variety.

Speaking of fat, the one downside of any cream- and butter-based recipe is that it's easy to make it overly greasy. Full-fat cream is vital to getting the right mouthfeel and flavor for the sauce, but you can always use a lower-fat butter or leaner protein as your main. Leaving fat out of other ingredients can also be an opportunity for adding it back through other means. Few things are more Creole than classic potatoes and sausage, but if you want to have less oil, there's no protein more lean and Louisiana than shrimp.