13 of the best potato recipes for true spud lovers

Ultra Deluxe Twice Baked Potatoes on white plate — Photo: A.E. Dwyer

Whether they’re mashed, baked, or air-fried, potatoes are a beautiful thing, aren’t they? Nature’s greatest starch, to be sure. We at The Takeout are always tinkering with tubers to develop unique recipes, as well as new interpretations of classic dishes, so that home cooks can enjoy potatoes to the fullest. Best of all, none of these recipes are overly complicated or involved, so there’s nothing standing between you and the spuds of your dreams. Click through to see over a dozen of our best potato recipes.

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Knish Hot Dogs

For those outside New York City who might be unaware, a knish is a tender bundle of onion-flecked mashed potatoes wrapped in slightly flaky mustard-yellow dough and then either baked or fried to perfection. And with these Knish Hot Dogs, two classic staples of NYC street carts are brought together in one deliciously filling package. We have instructions on how to bake them, deep-fry them, or air-fry them, depending on your preference. Here’s the recipe.

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Garlic-Parmesan Roasted Potato Hearts

Heart-shaped Garlic-Parmesan Roasted Potatoes on sheet pan — Garlic-Parmesan Roasted Potato Hearts

Heart-shaped food is fun any time of year, not just Valentine’s Day. These Garlic-Parmesan Roasted Potato Hearts will have you thinking about potatoes with a whole new creative mindset. To get a cookie cutter through them, it’s best to quickly parboil them so that they are slightly softened. Once you’ve carved out the hearts, they simply go on a sheet tray with oil and herbs and undergo a nice, hot roast to achieve that picture-perfect golden exterior. Here’s the recipe.

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Ultra Deluxe Twice-Baked Potatoes

With its beautiful piping, dusting of chives, and elegant presentation, the twice-baked potato starts with a humble tuber and transforms it into something fancy as hell. These Ultra Deluxe Twice-Baked Potatoes play up the textural contrast between the crispy outer skin and the velvety interior with lots of salt, sour cream, oil, and butter, and Heinz 57 sauce ties the whole dish together in an unexpected way. Go ahead and dress up your potatoes—you can pretend it’s a special occasion. Here’s the recipe.

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Tartiflette

Sometimes you find yourself with too many potatoes (they are sold by the sackful at most grocery stores), and in those cases, you should turn to tartiflette. It’s a French dish consisting of lots of potatoes layered with bacon, onion, and semi-soft cow’s milk cheese such as Port Salut. A tangy mixture of vinegar, hot sauce, and honey make this version of tartiflette anything but traditional, but the deviation is well worth it. Here’s the recipe.

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Potato Cauldron

Pyrex baking dish full of pile of seasoned potatoes on white surface — Potato Cauldron (without the cauldron)

Though The Takeout is based in Chicago, its roots are deep in Wisconsin. And there is nothing that says Wisconsin more than cheese. May we present to you the Potato Cauldron, the most Wisconsin—yea, Midwestern—side dish of all: a full gallon of potatoes blended with butter, two types of cheese, and bacon. If you’re going to bust a gut, you might as well go whole hog. Here’s the recipe.

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Millionaire Mashed Potatoes

Pile of mashed potatoes on white plate with gravy, chives, and butter — Millionaire Mashed Potatoes

Though it would probably be nice to win the lottery or get in on the ground floor of some very lucrative stock options and become a literal millionaire, eating these Millionaire Mashed Potatoes makes you feel like you’ve achieved greatness nonetheless. These are better than any mashed potatoes you’ve experienced in your life, richer and smoother and far more buttery. Top with a hefty, beefy gravy, or feel free to just eat them plain—they’re that good. Here’s the recipe.

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Potato Puffs with Vinegar Salt

White bowl of fried potato puffs beside plate with three potato puffs served on it — Potato Puffs with Vinegar Salt

Ever heard of pommes dauphine? That’s French for “deep-fried extra-fluffy mashed potato nuggets,” and the fact that they aren’t a bigger deal in North American cuisine is a travesty. They only require a few standard ingredients (potatoes, milk, butter, flour, etc.), and once fried, the whole batch can be tossed in spice blends, cheese powder, or seasoned salt and served hot. Here’s the recipe.

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Potato & Egg Sandwiches

Most of us have tried adding potato chips to our sandwiches for a bit of crunch, but how about making potato your primary sandwich filling? This recipe for potato and egg sandwiches is an homage to the ones that have been made at Defonte’s sandwich shop in Red Hook, Brooklyn, since 1922. The brilliance of this sandwich is that it’s cheap, it’s filling, it can be made by absolutely anybody regardless of their skill level, and yet somehow it’s still better than any sandwich you’ve ever had. Here’s the recipe.

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Polish Potato Dumplings

This recipe for Pyzy, or Polish potato dumplings, is all about building a chef’s instinct. You can’t go wrong when making this recipe; you might undermix or overmix your dough, you might add a bit too much flour or make the dumplings a touch too big. But that’s not a problem, because regardless of the texture, all pyzy is good pyzy—especially when the dumplings are smothered in an onion and mushroom gravy. Here’s the recipe.

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Buffalo Latkes with Blue Cheese Dip

Bright-orange Buffalo Latkes on sheet pan with dish of Blue Cheese Dip — Buffalo Latkes with Blue Cheese Dip

Potatoes are a beautiful thing, so any holiday that puts this humble root vegetable at the center of the menu, pan-fried in generous amounts of oil, is one we ought to celebrate. These Buffalo latkes are somewhere in the middle of sacred and profane: they still follow the basic rules of latke preparation, just with an added bit of flavorful flair. Here’s the recipe.

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Lefse with Cranberry-Lingonberry Preserves

Pile of folded Lefse on plate with bowl of Cranberry-Lingonberry Preserves — Lefse with Cranberry-Lingonberry Preserves

Good news: this recipe will help you use up a lot of potatoes—three pounds of Russet potatoes, to be exact. Lefse are thin potato-based flatbreads traditionally enjoyed by Norwegians at Christmastime. But why they get pigeonholed into being a holiday treat is a mystery. This recipe provides instructions for a delicious jam to pair with your lefse, but lefse can be eaten with literally anything you want, because in the land of flatbread, there are no rules. Here’s the recipe.

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World’s Crispiest Hash Browns

Four-panel image of raw potatoes, potatoes in a pan, hash browns on plate, and side view of crispy exterior — World’s Crispiest Hash Browns

The secret to the perfect hash browns isn’t in the recipe so much as the technique. There’s a reason most homemade hash browns are limp and soggy, utterly devoid of that golden, crackly crispness that makes these spuds so special. The secret lies in how you grate them, rinse them, dry them, and season them; it’s a precise process, but not a difficult one, and once you follow these instructions to the letter, you’ll be amazed at what kind of crunch you can achieve. Here’s the recipe.

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Champ, Colcannon, and Boxty

Bowl of butter being drizzled onto pile of mashed potatoes mixed with scallions — Champ (mashed potatoes with scallions and butter)

Aside from Idaho, there is no place in the world associated more closely with potatoes than Ireland. The Irish are masters at dressing up their potatoes and mixing them with greens: scallions, cabbage, kale, nettles, they’ve tried them all. Learn about the Essential Potato Dishes of Ireland, enough for a separate multi-course meal: Champ, Colcannon, Boxty, and Potato and Scallion Soup. Here are the recipes.

The best potato recipes, from mashed to hashed

The best potato recipes, from mashed to hashed

You’ve got a bag of spuds, and we’ve got plenty of ideas.

Knish Hot Dogs

Knish Hot Dogs

Garlic-Parmesan Roasted Potato Hearts

Garlic-Parmesan Roasted Potato Hearts

Ultra Deluxe Twice-Baked Potatoes

Ultra Deluxe Twice-Baked Potatoes

Tartiflette

Tartiflette

Potato Cauldron

Potato Cauldron

Millionaire Mashed Potatoes

Millionaire Mashed Potatoes

Potato Puffs with Vinegar Salt

Potato Puffs with Vinegar Salt

Potato & Egg Sandwiches

Potato & Egg Sandwiches

Polish Potato Dumplings

Polish Potato Dumplings

Buffalo Latkes with Blue Cheese Dip

Buffalo Latkes with Blue Cheese Dip

Lefse with Cranberry-Lingonberry Preserves

Lefse with Cranberry-Lingonberry Preserves

World’s Crispiest Hash Browns

World’s Crispiest Hash Browns

Champ, Colcannon, and Boxty

Champ, Colcannon, and Boxty

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