Baked Potato Casserole

This delicious and heart-warming Baked Potato Casserole recipe is loaded with bacon, sour cream, cheddar cheese and green onions. It’s basically a loaded baked potato in casserole form…and it is so good!

This loaded baked potato casserole recipe uses frozen potatoes so it’s very easy to prepare. Makes for a great potato side dish for holidays, potlucks or even everyday dinners.

Casseroles are delicious way to serve a crowd on holidays or get-togethers with friends and family. Here are a few of my other favorites: Cheesy Bacon Potato Casserole, Mexican Chicken Casserole, Sausage Tater Tot Breakfast Casserole and Baked Ziti.

EASY Baked Potato Casserole Recipe

This baked potato casserole recipe of mine is not only crazy delicious, it is super easy to make!

It calls for frozen potatoes, which means no peeling and dicing of potatoes, but you are still getting real potatoes in your dish.

Baked potato casserole is rich, creamy, cheesy and loaded with crunchy bacon and green onions. The combination of flavor and texture is pretty magical, and you are going to fall in love with every bite.

To make the process even easier, you can use bacon bits so you can skip cooking the bacon.

All the reasons why I love this baked potato casserole recipe:

• Potato, cheese and bacon combination: the three ingredients that go together like magic! It is so delicious and satisfying
• Minimal active time: it takes about 10 minutes of time in the kitchen to send the bacon into the oven, cut the bacon and put the potato casserole together, and the rest of the time the oven does the rest!
• Short list of pantry friendly ingredients
• Feed a crowd: baked potato casserole is one of the best dishes to make to feed a lot of people. It’s easy to come together and it makes a lot!
• Makes great leftovers: simply microwave leftovers and it taste just as good as it was fresh

Ingredients

Below are the ingredients needed to make Loaded Baked Potato Casserole. If you look closely, you’ll find that it’s pretty much most of the ingredients needed to make a loaded baked potato!

• frozen hash brown potatoes – this is a frozen potato product already diced into 1-inch cubes. No peeling or dicing of potatoes on your part!
• bacon – for a shortcut, use bacon bits.
• sour cream – this is to give potatoes a creamy texture and a slight tangy flavor.
• cream cheese – this will bring some nice creaminess to the baked potato casserole
• milk – any type of milk works great, from skim to whole. For a ultra rich and creamy texture, you can use half and half or heavy cream.
• salted butter – I like to use salted instead of unsalted for a better flavor.
• cheddar cheese – shredded
• garlic powder – seasoning for the potatoes
• salt – used to open up the flavors in the potatoes
• green onions – as a garnish on top

How to make it

Baked potato casserole is super simple to prepare and I have short cuts to make it even easier if you’d like!

Let’s walk through step-by-step on how to make it

Prepare bacon: Cook bacon either on a skillet or in the oven. To cook bacon in the oven, place bacon on baking sheet lined with aluminum foil and bake for 10-13 minutes at 400℉. Since we will be cooking bacon again later, it doesn’t have to be fully crispy at this point.

Once bacon is cooked, dap to remove grease and then slice into small spices of bacon bits.

Short cut: use bacon bits and skip this step! Get good quality bacon bits that is made with real bacon for best taste.

Prepare Potato Mixture: Bring together diced hash brown potatoes, shredded cheddar cheese, sour cream, cream cheese, butter, melted milk, garlic powder, and salt in a large mixing bowl. Mix to combine.

Assemble Baked Potato Casserole: Grease a 9’x13′ rectangular baking dish. Bring potato mixture into the baking dish and spread it out.

Top with more shredded cheddar cheese and bacon pieces.

Bake: Bake in the oven at 350℉ covered with aluminum foil for 40 minutes, and then uncovered for another 20 minutes.

Garnish: When baked potato casserole is done, remove from oven and garnish with green onions on top!

And there you have it, loaded baked potato casserole! It is cheesy, salty, crunchy, with fresh bites of green onions. Just a fair warning: it is pretty addictive!

This is dedicated to all the loaded baked potato fans out there. Now you can enjoy your favorite potato in casserole form…which takes little effort to make!

Make Ahead and Reheating Instructions

Baked Potato Casserole is a great dish to make ahead for holidays, potluck and gatherings. Make sure to cool it completely, wrap or cover, and then refrigerating. It can be refrigerated for up to 5 days.

To freeze wrap with plastic wrap and the aluminum foil, and freeze for up to 2 months.

When ready to reheat, bring baked potato casserole to a complete defrost if frozen (leave in refrigerator 24 hours prior). Cover and reheat for 30-40 minutes at 375℉ until potato casserole is warm throughout.

Variations

Here are other ingredients that you can add to this baked potato casserole:

• cooked chicken or sausage – toss it with the potato/cheese mixture for additional protein
• chives or parsley as toppings
• other cheeses – you can use other cheese in addition or in place of cheddar, such as Monterey jack, Colby jack, mozzarella and more.
• fresh potatoes – should you decide to use fresh potatoes, peel and dice them into small 1/2 inch cubes, and follow the same instructions.

Frequently Asked Questions

More Casserole Recipes

• Sushi Casserole
• Crescent Roll Breakfast Casserole
• Fresh Green Bean Casserole
• Spinach Lasagna
• Chicken Enchilada Casserole
• Crescent Roll Breakfast Casserole
• Stuffed Bell Pepper Casserole (by Best Casserole Recipes)