Hello and welcome to Cooking from Food Storage, Episode 2. In this article I will show you how to make Cheesy Scalloped Potatoes using shelf stable foods that you can store in your pantry.

How to Make Cheesy Scalloped Potatoes from Food Storage

Preheat an oven to 350 Degrees.

Ingredients

Cheesy scalloped potatoes ingredients

  • 1 quart (4 cups) sliced, dehydrated potatoes
  • 1/3 cup powdered milk
  • 1/4 cup dried onions
  • 16 oz can Ragu Double Cheddar Cheese Sauce
  • 12 oz can of Spam (I used Great Value brand luncheon meat)
  • 4 cups hot water

Rehydrate the Potatoes

rehydrate dehydrated potatoes

Put the dehydrated potatoes into bowl and cover with hot water. Put a lid on to keep the heat on. (I put a plate over the bowl.) It will take about 20 minutes for the potatoes to rehydrate.

Fry the Spam

fry up the spam to put on the scalloped potatoes

While potatoes are rehydrating, cut up and fry up Spam. Note that this step is optional, because Spam is already cooked, but I like the taste better if you brown the Spam.

Note that you can leave the meat out if you prefer a vegetarian (not vegan) version.

Prepare the Cheese Sauce

cheese mixture for scalloped potatoes

Pour the Ragu cheese sauce, powdered milk, onions, and 1/4 cup of water into a mixing bowl. Stir to combine.

Note: to get as much cheese sauce out of the jar as possible, I poured the water into the jar, put the lid on and shook it up. I then poured the “cheesy water” into the cheese sauce mixture and stirred it up.

Assemble the Cheesy Scalloped potatoes

Spread a thin layer of cheese sauce on the bottom of a pie pan or square casserole dish.

cooking from food storage

Drain the potatoes, but don’t worry about getting all the water off.

Put the potatoes onto the layer of cheese sauce, top with spam and cover with cheese sauce.

Bake

Cover with foil and bake in a 350 degree, preheated oven.

Bake for 30 minutes.

This is what the potatoes looked like after baking, covered for 30 minutes

Uncover and put back into the oven for an additional 10 minutes to brown.

This is what they look like after an additional 10 minutes of baking.

Cost

Potatoes – $1Onions – $0.50Ragu – $1.72Milk – $0.20Spam $1.84

Total $5.26

@4 servings, this is $1.32 per serving

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Making it Stretch

I personally feel there was plenty of Spam and cheese sauce to feed more people. If you want to stretch this to 6 servings, I recommend starting with 6 cups of dehydrated potatoes. Increase the amount of water you add to the cheese sauce to 3/4 cup. Bake in a 9″ x 13″ pan.

Cheese Sauce Recipe

If you have cheese on hand, you can make your cheese sauce from scratch, rather than using the Ragu sauce and powdered milk.

Ingredients

  • 4 tablespoons butter
  • 4 tablespoons all purpose flour
  • 2 cups milk
  • 2 cups grated cheese
  • Salt and pepper to taste.

Melt butter in a sauce pan over low heat. Whisk in the flour until smooth. Cook the flour/butter mixture for about 3 minutes, stirring constantly. The flour should turn a light golden-brown color. Whisk in the milk, salt and pepper, and cook, stirring frequently, until the sauce is the desired thickness. Mix in the grated cheese until the cheese is melted. If it doesn’t taste cheesy enough, you may need to add a bit more salt, as the salt helps to bring out the flavor of the cheese.

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