What I Ate: Smashed Potatoes & Bacon Sprouts

All right, so Thanksgiving is just a few days away and I shared a bunch of recipe cards last year and more recently, I shared a mashed potatoes recipe, a mac and cheese recipe, a cornbread recipe, and a caramel apple dessert. But, I had two more suggestions to throw out there: smashed potatoes and bacon brussels sprouts. I made these a little while ago and thought they would make great additions to any Thanksgiving feast. The reason I'm not making this a recipe post is because these aren't v. technical or labor intensive (and I'm lazy and I didn't think to take more photos while I was making this stuff).

I started off by rendering the fat off of some bacon and getting the bacon itself nice and crispy.

Meanwhile, to prepare the potatoes, I boiled up about 2 or 3 lbs of fingerling yukon gold potatoes. I cut the bigger pieces in half so that all of the pieces would cook in the same amount of time. Then, I drained the potatoes and placed them on a foil-lined sheet pan. I used my potato masher to just smash the potatoes into a flat mess and drizzled them all with a bit of olive oil and sprinkled them with salt and pepper.

Then, I tossed these into the broiler for about 10 minutes until the edges started to get golden brown and crispy but still soft in some areas.

I just finished these off by plating them, adding generous dollops of sour cream, sprinkled with some grated cheddar, bacon bits, and diced red onion. You could certainly use green onion for some more color contrast. Other topping ideas: mascarpone cheese and caramelized shallots and/or leeks and crispy pancetta bits, roasted garlic and creme fraiche and scallions, salsa and hot sauce and diced avocado. There are so many toppings that would be amazing on top of these crispy potatoes. These are kind of like potato skins but easier to make and you don't have to find a purpose for the scooped out potato because there's no scooping involved.

As far as the brussels sprouts go, I just roasted them in my usual way but after they came out of the oven, I drizzled them with the rendered bacon fat. This just added a bit of smoky, fatty goodness and made these veggies seem rich and decadent.

I probably won't be blogging again until after the weekend so I just want to say Happy Thanksgiving! Enjoy good food, time with family, and Black Friday shopping.

Cheers.