Smashed Potatoes With Bacon, Cheese and Greens

By Sam Sifton

Updated Nov. 15, 2024

Smashed Potatoes With Bacon, Cheese and Greens
David Malosh for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews. Prop Stylist: Paige Hicks.
Total Time
1 hour
Prep Time
10 minutes
Cook Time
50 minutes
Rating
4(699)
Comments
Read comments

This is a no-recipe recipe, a recipe without an ingredients list or steps. It invites you to improvise in the kitchen.

Get some nice baseball-sized, yellow-fleshed potatoes, one per person, and cut them into quarters. Toss them with olive oil, salt and pepper on a sheet pan, and slide them into a hot oven to roast, say 425 degrees. While they’re cooking, make yourself useful: Fry some bacon; grate some Cheddar; toss a few large handfuls of spinach or baby kale with olive oil, just enough to lightly coat the leaves; slice some avocados; and see if you have some sour cream in the refrigerator.

When the potatoes are soft, pull them from the oven and smash the pieces down with the bottom of a coffee cup or drinking glass. Arrange the smashed potatoes on the sheet pan, and top each portion with greens, a chopped slice of cooked bacon, and plenty of cheese. Return to the oven to melt the cheese, then garnish with avocado and dots of sour cream. Or yogurt! It’s a no-recipe recipe. There are no rules!

Sam Sifton features a no-recipe recipe every Wednesday in his What to Cook newsletter. Sign up to receive it. You can find more no-recipe recipes here.

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4 out of 5
699 user ratings
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Comments

Alexandra

Amazing, thank you so much. My new go-to meal for up to four people. I used diced ham, heavy French cream and goat cheese. Microwaved the potato. Used a very hot oven and got crunchy sides and bottom and soft interior. I'm now working on how to give it the additional pep to make it sing. Perhaps a tiny bit of jalapeno peppers sprinkled on the potoato?

Lisa

Taking a cue from Helen, I added the strips of bacon to the same sheet pan for the last 20 min of potato roasting :-)

Joolz

Very nice! I followed the non-recipe recipe. Next time I think I’ll add some lemon juice and capers. And an herb of some sort!

J.Fonda

Do the bacon first then stir the bacon grease into the potato’s before they go in and add liquid smoke.

Mary Day

Love this simple technique to make the smashed potatoes in one pan. They were fluffy and crispy, a super fast and easy.

Aaron

These were great. Here's a tip for the smashing part: if you flip the cooked spuds skin-side-up first, then smash, the potatoes "keep together" a bit better and are a little easier to scoop off the mug bottom if it sticks.

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