3 Easy Potato Recipe Ideas

A bag of potatoes is cheap, and luckily there are hundreds of different things you can do with a potato. No matter if you like them pan fried, baked, or deep fried, there is a recipe out there that's perfect for you!

If you just picked up a bag of potatoes on sale at the store, the next step is figuring out what to do with them. Below are three very easy ideas you can use for potato recipes.

1. Baked potatoes
Baked potatoes are great as an easy side dish or even a whole meal, depending on what you add to it. They are great as a side with roasts, pork chops (can you even eat pork chops without baked potatoes?), and other main meat dishes.

When used as an entire meal, you can make a spread of toppings for everyone to pick their own. Things like chili, cheese (shredded or melted, your choice), sour cream, bacon bits, etc make great toppings for baked potatoes.

2. Mashed potatoes
A bit time consuming, but one of my absolute favorites. First you boil the potatoes, then you use a hand mixes to mash them. Make sure you add milk, butter, salt, and pepper while using a hand mixer to mash the potatoes. Be absolutely careful not to add too much butter or milk - 1Tbs butter is plenty to start with. Add your milk very slowly.

If you want something a little different, try red potatoes and garlic salt instead of regular salt. These are excellent with the skin left on and taste exactly like they do in the restaurant. YUM!

3. French Fries
Goes great with hamburgers or any hot sandwiches. Just cut your potatoes into french fry sized strips, drizzle with olive oil, and bake. You can also use a deep fryer if you have one. Season with your choice of seasoning. Salt or seasoning salt works fine, but we've also used garlic salt before as well.

Another version includes cutting the potatoes into chunks for "oven fries". They bake pretty well and are really tasty with sour cream. Make them the same as instructed above - with olive oil and baked in the oven at 400* for about 40-50 mins.

There's many, many other ways to make potatoes obviously, but this is just a few ideas to start. You can try adding ingredients to any of the above to make your own interesting side dish, such as shredded cheese, cream of mushroom soup, or dill weed spice.