Cheesy Potato Bake

Ingredients

• 30 g Butter
• 250 g Cheddar Cheese
• 275 ml Milk
• 16 g Flour
• 600 g Potatoes
• Bacon

Method

Heat your oven to 180°C. The dish works because a proper roux emulsion binds the cream to the potatoes — skip this and you'll end up with separated, grainy sauce pooling at the bottom.

Melt 30 g butter over medium heat until foaming, then add 16 g flour and stir constantly. You're looking for a pale, sandy paste that bubbles gently — about 2 minutes. This sauce-making step matters because the heat cooks out the raw flour taste and gelatinises the starch, giving you the binding agent for what comes next. Remove from heat. Add 275 ml cold milk slowly whilst whisking hard to prevent lumps. The temperature drop stops the roux seizing up. Return to medium heat and stir until it thickens — you want something that coats the back of a spoon, glossy and smooth. Off heat, fold in 187 g grated Cheddar (three-quarters of your cheese) and season with salt and black pepper. Taste it; the sauce should be bold enough to carry the bland potatoes.

Peel 600 g potatoes and slice them thin — 3 mm or so, thick enough to hold their shape during the 45-minute bake but thin enough to cook through. Butter a deep oven-baking dish, then build in layers: potatoes, then cheese sauce, then a scattered handful of bacon pieces. Repeat until everything is used, finishing with a layer of sauce and the remaining 63 g cheese scattered across the top. The layering lets sauce penetrate every level instead of sitting on top like a blanket.

Bake for 45 minutes. The top should turn golden and the edges will bubble slightly where they meet the dish — that's your signal the potatoes are tender and the sauce has set. If the cheese blackens before the potatoes yield to a fork, cover loosely with foil. The bake is done when a knife slides through a potato layer with almost no resistance and the sauce no longer sloshes audibly when you shake the dish gently.

Serve directly from the dish while it's still hot. The sauce will firm up slightly as it cools.