Cheese Potatoes

Ingredients:

3 cups diced potatoes
3 tablespoons butter or margarine
3 tablespoons flour
1 1/2 cups milk
1 cup shredded Cheddar cheese
salt and pepper

Start by melting up 3 tbsp of butter.

Step 1:

Grate up that cheese while the butter melts;

Step 2:

Once the butter is liquidy it's time to form the roux so dump in the flour and mix it up so that it looks like this - this is a white roux so use low heat and avoid cooking it brown.

Step 3:

Once it looks like this dump in the milk:

Step 4:

This is where you have to stand vigilantly over the process - don't let it cook on its own, keeis bad and so is the formation of milk scum. If your sauce looks like it does in the pictures here, you are good;

Step 5:

getting there;

Step 6:

OK now the butter droplets go away and it starts to get smooth and thicker so DON'T STOP STIRING, this is where you can mess up by burning the milk at the bottom and getting nasty sauce.

Step 7:

KEEP STIRING!

Step 8:

It's good to see some bubbles.

Step 9:

There we go - it sticks to your wooden spoon, it's smooth, white and thick.

Step 10:

Now grab your cheese and dump it on in there (I'm using yellow cheese because that's all I had that day - swiss is better).

Step 11:

Cheese starting to melt.

Step 12:

Cheese melted:

After the sauce is looking good, salt and pepper to taste.

Step 13:

Have your sliced potatoes close by.

What I do is take uncooked potatoes and slice em about 1/2 inch thick. Grab something fireproof to cook in and line the bottom with potatoes, then a layer of sliced onions (again uncooked), and repeat until the cooking device is full as seen above! Of course this should be done before you make the sauce but if you forget, no problem, the sauce can be reheated if need be.

Step 14:

Dump the sauce over the potatoes.

Step 15:

You can also dump on 1/2 cup of bread crumbs you've cooked up with some butter, salt and pepper at this point if you like a crispy top.

Since we are using raw ingredeants we want to cook this for around an hour at 400. I usually cover it with aluminum foil and check it at an hour - sticking a fork in it should be almost effortless if the potatoes are cooked up right. If they aren't soft just leave it in there some more.