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If I had to list my top five favorite foods, pizza and mashed potatoes would definitely be in there. I could eat one or both every day and be happy.
Today I was making pizza for the kids for lunch, and I had a revelation: why not take my leftover mashed potatoes from earlier in the week and put them on a pizza? I couldn’t imagine it being bad, and it had the potential to be quite amazing.
While the pizza dough was rising and the oven was preheating, I started heating the mashed potatoes up and adding things to them. They’d started out already with butter, salt, pepper, and heavy cream. I added more butter and cream, and sour cream. I started to reach for the dried scallions, but then I had a better idea: onions!
I sautéed some sliced yellow onions in butter for about fifteen minutes – I didn’t quite take them to the caramelized stage, I just kept going until the bite was out of them and they tasted nice and sweet. I stirred them all into the potato.
I got my dough ready and was about put the potato on, when I realized that the potatoes weren’t spreadable – they were still too thick. The dough I use is very thin and squishy before it goes into the oven. I needed to thin those potatoes out! So, I added a few more tablespoons of heavy cream (I mean, you can never have too much heavy cream, right?) and whipped them really well with a fork. Hey, I never said this was a diet recipe!
At this point it was easy to spread. I’d say it was about a quarter inch thick.
I topped the potatoes with some really sharp cheddar and then some shredded Parmesan, and it was good to go.
Six minutes later, I had this.
I topped it with cold sour cream and dug in. The verdict? Absolutely delicious.
Am I the only one who sees an old lady’s face in this piece of pizza?
But…Bacon!
Now, any other person on the planet would have mixed crumbled bacon into the potato. Even I, a vegetarian, would have done so if I’d had any bacon in the house, because I knew my husband would think the pizza was bland as-is. Sure enough, he said that it was OK, but that bacon would have made it a winner. Learn from my mistake: if a meat-eater is going to get anywhere near this, add bacon!
The Recipe…sort of
Anyway, I hesitate to call this a recipe. It’s more like assembly instructions. I can’t give you any measurements because I didn’t use any – just make the potatoes taste good before you put them on the pizza, and you’ll be fine.
Also, feel free to add anything else you would normally put in mashed potatoes or a loaded baked potato.
Mashed Potato Pizza
Ingredients
Pizza crust
Mashed potatoes – enough to cover one pizza
Butter
Cream or milk
Sour cream
Salt and pepper to taste
Yellow onion, about 1 medium, sliced
More butter
More cream
Bacon, cooked and crumbled (optional according to me, necessary according to my husband)
Sharp cheddar cheese, shredded
Parmesan cheese, shredded
Sour cream for garnish
Directions
Slowly heat mashed potatoes in a saucepan, stirring frequently, while adding the butter, cream (or milk), sour cream, and salt and pepper to taste.
Meanwhile, sauté onion in about a tablespoon of butter until very soft, about 15 minutes
Mix onions in to potato mixture; add enough cream to make the potatoes fluffy and spreadable; whip them with a fork. Stir in the bacon.
Stretch out your pizza dough and cover with the potato mixture. Sprinkle on both cheeses.
Bake according to your pizza dough’s directions.
Top with dollops of sour cream and serve!
Oooh, I definitely would do this. My family’s Irish, so I learned how to make tons of potato foods, but this is a new one. I think I’d probably add chives to it on top of the cheese and do a flavoring on the crust. I like to mix melted butter, Parmesan, garlic, and salt and then brush it on my pizza dough’s outer crust. It gives some flavor to the back end and makes it a bit crispier on the top. I bet it would go great with this one to be honest.
@Brooke: Oh wow, that sounds like an excellent idea! I’m totally going to try that.
@Amy Oztan: Also, do you ever make Irish potato cakes? My family’s Irish as well and my grandmother used to make these for me when we would visit her in Ireland. Basically you just take mashed potatoes and add onion and flour and roll them out to about a quarter inch, and fry them in very little butter. SO good.
A friend of mine reminded me that Pizzeria Uno has an appetizer like this, and I know I’ve had it, even though I haven’t been there in probably twenty years. But IIRC that was more of a biscuit crust than a regular pizza crust. Must find a biscuit crust recipe!!!
Bland, you say? Why, then, yes. My children will be all over this.
@DontBlameTheKids: Ha! The joke around here is that if something is so spicy that it’s burning my mouth, only then will my husband think it has any flavor at all.