Funeral Potatoes

What does this Southern California girl know from Southern cooking? Butkus, that's what!

Once a month, a group of friends of mine get together for a sort of Family Dinner. The person in charge of coordinating it has gone all crazy with our themed meals. I mean, what else would you call it when we were asked to bring a Southern dish. The midwesterners were all, "Do you mean a hot dish" (but they said it with that cute little Meenah-sooo-dah twang) and I was all, "Do you mean like Southern, like South of the border?" Our coordinator was like...

No.

I wasn't about to go looking for a recipe. Not when I had access to real live Southern people (like REAL ones!) in my Twitter stream. Within five minutes of asking for a good southern recipe, I had my choice between all kinds of really great casseroles, but I needed something easy. You know... since I waited until the morning of the party. Then popped up a tweet that said: Hash Brown Casserole.

High Carb Heaven!

I have been really enjoying hash browns lately... way too much. So when this recipe came across, I was incredibly excited. I'm serious. Excited about potatoes. How sad, yes? You don't understand. I live in the land of Low Carb. Having a reason to eat a food item that is equivelant to base jumping just got my insulin pumping! And you know what? All my other Low Carb friends agreed. This casserole, aka Funeral Potatoes, was gone in like five minutes. Next time I'll make two!

Please enjoy this Southern dish courtesy of Sugar via Jess, aka Triple J.

1 32-oz bag frozen shredded hash browns (you can use real potatoes, too. boil, peel and shred about 6-8 potatoes and use 4-6 cups shredded potatoes)
1 can cream of chicken soup (you can use any cream soup but mushrooms are gross and i always have cream of chicken in the cupboard)
1 small onion, diced fine (i'm usually forced to leave these out. damn kids! use onion salt or powder if you don't wanna use an onion...)
1 16-oz container sour cream
1-2 cups shredded sharp cheddar cheese (depends on how cheesy you like your potatoes
4 T butter, melted
3/4 to 1 cup crushed corn flakes (you can use crackers - cheese crackers are good, too!)
salt and pepper to taste

preheat oven to 350. in a large bowl, combine the soup, sour cream, onions, cheese and salt and pepper. stir in the shredded potatoes, coat well. put potato mixture into a greased 9x13 baking dish. in a separate bowl, mix the crumbs and melted butter together. sprinkle evenly of the top of the potatoes. cover and bake at 350 for 45 minutes, or until hot and bubbly. remove the foil the last 10-15 minutes of baking so the top can get crunchy.

I made some modifications, because I'm just a crazy rebel. Instead of chopping up an onion and getting my hands all smelly, I tossed in a packet of Knorr Onion Soup. Also, instead of the Corn Flakes topping, I crushed up a bage of Kettle Sour Cream & Onion potato chips. That was soooo yum!

Now back to my regularly scheduled low carb lifestyle... until Thanksgiving, of course!