The 25 best side dishes involving potatoes

Asking for “au gratin potatoes” (or "potatoes au gratin") is a fancy way of saying you want your spuds sliced, topped with cheese and browned in an oven. If you’ve never made them before, get started with this simple au gratin recipe from Taste of Home.

Baked potatoes are great as a healthier alternative to fried or deep-fried potato preparations, but we end up canceling out that healthiness by topping our baked beauties with butter, cheese, bacon bits, sour cream and chives. (With no shame!) Looking for tips on making the best baked potatoes at home? Alton Brown of the Food Network has you covered. Oh, and if you don’t eat the potato skin, you’re missing out on an additional source of fiber and other nutrients, so don’t hollow out your spud, bud!

Although generally prepared this way, boiled potatoes do not need to have the skin removed first. So before you start skinning them like you’re Buffalo Bill from “Silence of the Lambs,” save yourself some time by remembering what we said about the nutrients in the exterior. For a solid skin-on recipe, try this butter parsley version from FoodieCrush.

A traditional Irish dish, Colcannon is a mashed potato side made with kale (or cabbage), green onions, milk, and a whole lot of butter. Thinking of trying it tonight? Check out this recipe from Tasting Table.

We’ll get to classic french fries momentarily, but first we want to suggest a more unique alternative: cottage fries. Instead of being cut into spears or wedges, the potatoes are sliced into rounds, and instead of being fried, they are oven-roasted. They can also be spiced to your liking, like these cottage fries from AllRecipes that include salt, black pepper, cayenne pepper, and herbes de Provence.

As enjoyable as they are adorable, duchess potatoes are also easier than they look. As The Endless Meal will explain in this recipe, you’re basically just making mashed potatoes; adding butter, cream, salt, pepper, and egg yolks; piping it all through a bag; brushing each little dollop with an egg; and baking until the ridges are golden.

I think we should all be able to agree that french fries are the best potato side dish — or at least the most popular one. Whether they are of the steak, shoestring, fast food, curly, crinkle-cut, wedge or waffle (our personal favorite) variety, we can’t resist fries whenever they are offered, especially when they come with a meal. (And don’t get us started on the different sauces for dipping or toppings like cheese, chili and gravy.) Let’s be real, are you really going to substitute a side salad?

No fryer at home? No problem. Try this ingenious stovetop version from The Baking Fairy.

Despite its somber name, funeral potatoes make our mouths very happy — so let’s put the “fun” back in “funeral.” After all, this dish is really just a cheesy hash brown casserole. The potatoes are mixed with sour cream, cream of chicken soup, butter, onion, and cheese, and the whole thing is topped with crushed cornflakes and baked. Tastes Better From Scratch has the recipe.

Instead of slicing or dicing, hash browns are completely shredded before getting fried and served with breakfast. When formed into a patty, this preparation style is similar to the Swiss dish of rösti or röschti, which is basically a fritter made of shredded potatoes. Like hash browns, this Swiss staple often accompanies eggs.

Don’t buy the bagged kind; get serious with this homemade version from Serious Eats.

Like duchess potatoes, hasselback potatoes both sound and look complicated — but aren’t! As Tasting Table will tell you in this Hasselback sweet potatoes recipe, it’s as simple as slicing, salting, buttering, and baking 

Also known as “country-fried potatoes,” home fries are often confused with hash browns. The difference, however, is that home fries are diced or cubed rather than shredded. Other than that, these two sides have a lot in common, and they both have an intimate relationship with eggs. For the most flavor, make these bad boys crispy, and mix them up with chopped peppers and onions, like in this recipe from The Kitchen Whisperer.

Looking to switch up your usual side dish options? Try these Korean stir-fried potatoes from My Korean Kitchen. Also known as gamjachae bokkeum, this super simple side only requires potatoes, carrots, onion, salt, pepper, sesame seeds, and oil.

Mashed potatoes are a necessity at Thanksgiving, but we also don’t shy away from eating them year-round. Just do us a favor and don’t completely puree the potatoes; leave some little chunks in there for the perfect consistency and also to remind your guests, family and self that the dish wasn’t made from a mix. Martha Stewart has you covered with a simple-yet-satisfying garlic version that only requires five ingredients.

Potato chips can be a snack on their own, a side dish that accompanies burgers or sandwiches, or a way for restaurants to trick you into paying more for fries. Just remember: In England, fries are called “chips,” chips are called “crisps,” English muffins are called “muffins,” and muffins are called “scones with an extra bottom part that no one really likes.” For the crispiest of all potato chips, check out this recipe from Bon Appetit.

Potato pancakes come in many shapes, sizes, combinations and names. Latkes or latkas are a traditional Jewish food that is an important part of a Hanukkah meal. Polish people smother them in various sauces. Germans serve them salty or sweet, the latter with applesauce. The British call them “tattie fish” because of the shape, with eggs and onions mixed in. The Irish make a starchier version that often includes baking soda and buttermilk. Even the Koreans have a style of potato pancake, called “gamja-jeon.” We don’t want to play favorites, so here’s a “classic” version from Epicurious.

Like revenge, potato salad is a dish best served cold, making it a perfect picnic or barbecue side dish in the summertime. Ordering potato salad is also a great way to feel like you’re substituting something more healthy in place of fries (mostly because it has “salad” in the name) — but you’re usually not. After all, potato salad is traditionally mixed with mayonnaise, so it’s a push. Looking to cut a few calories? Try this German potato salad recipe from Food Network, which nixes the mayo and instead calls for vinegar, Dijon mustard, chopped onion and thick-cut bacon. (Although if you’re trying to stay fit, maybe nix the bacon too.)

A side dish, snack, or appetizer, potato skins can be bought frozen but are so much more satisfying when made from scratch. And why not prep them at home when it’s so simple? You just scrub, season, bake, slice, scoop, top with cheese and bacon, and bake once more. Small Town Woman has some little suggestions to prepare your potato skins perfectly.

Although it’s not a hard-and-fast rule when it comes to potato pairings, it’s generally burgers and fries, steak and baked, turkey and mashed, and chicken and roasted. Why? Probably because we’re usually roasting the chicken anyway, and we want the main dish and side to have something in common to talk about. Or maybe because you can actually make the chicken and potatoes at the same time, as displayed in this recipe for roasted lemon chicken with rosemary from Laughing Spatula.

It’s easy to confuse au gratin potatoes and scalloped potatoes, as the two dishes are very similar in preparation. The difference? Au gratin potatoes include cheese, while scalloped potatoes do not. They do, however, both use butter, onion, salt, pepper, and milk or cream. Get the scoop on scalloped potatoes with this recipe from Spend with Pennies.

Crispy, buttery, and fun to make, smashed potatoes should absolutely be added to your arsenal of potato side dishes. They’re made by boiling, draining, and smashing small and medium potatoes, which are then drizzled with olive oil and butter, sprinkled with salt and pepper, and baked for about 50 minutes. As Recipe Tin Eats will tell you, there’s no flipping necessary!

Forgetting the mashed potatoes at Thanksgiving is a major faux pas, unless of course there’s still sweet potato casserole. Then we’ll let it go. After all, sweet potato casserole is practically a dessert, depending how you make it. For us, we mix the mashed sweet spuds with brown sugar, vanilla and spices and top the whole thing with candied pecans and marshmallows, like in this recipe from Family Fresh Meals.

They’re basically french fries but made with sweet potatoes. That means they’re still fried in unhealthy but oh-so-delicious oil, but thankfully, the sweet potatoes themselves have some health benefits. One whole sweet potato contains more than four times your daily requirement for vitamin A; 37 percent of your vitamin C; and some calcium, iron and potassium, too. In fact, sweet potatoes have more potassium than bananas!

If you’re dipping these beauties in ketchup, you’re doing it wrong. Head over to Food52 for a version topped with goat cheese and raspberry sauce.

Nobody likes a poorly prepared tater tot. To get it right, this side dish must be served crispy and crunchy on the outside, without being soggy or undercooked on the inside. From there, your imagination is the limit. You can dip the tots in ketchup ranch, barbecue sauce — or try a recipe like this one for buffalo tots from A Flavor Journal.

Also known as tater tot hotdish, this food is a Midwestern staple that can be served as a side or a main course. As the name suggests, it consists of tater tots in a casserole dish with ground beef, condensed cream of mushroom soup, a vegetable like green beans or corn (or both!), and shredded cheese. Food.com dishes out the details here.

The difference between baked potatoes and twice-baked potatoes (other than the whole baked-a-second-time thing) is that the twice-baked variety is cut in half, the inside is scooped out and mixed with the aforementioned ingredients (like bacon, cheese and sour cream), and only then is it rebaked. Or, as in this Food & Wine recipe from Emeril Lagasse, an extra potato can be used and you’ll then have an overstuffed twice-baked potato. Feel free to shout “Bam!” as much as necessary during the prep.