Parmesan Baby Potatoes with Sweet Onions

I love a good trick … a shortcut, especially when it comes to cooking. This is one of my go-to side dishes that always gets rave reviews and best of all it’s easy if you know the trick!

Potatoes are perhaps the most ubiquitous of side dishes, we bake them, we fry them. we mash them, we cook them in almost every imaginable way … this is Poppy’s version.

It starts with baby potatoes, most of the time I just buy a 24 oz. bag of Klondike Gourmet petite potatoes from our local Shop N’ Save. If you calculate the cost per ounce, it’s not the cheapest option, but it is the easiest. It’s easy because they are small and except for the largest ones, don’t require any dicing. Most days, I’m all about easy!

The trick, what’s this trick you speak of Poppy?

OK, it’s very simple, we want these little guys tasty, we want them buttery, we want them crispy, but we don’t want to have to deep fry them or cook them for a long time. So the trick is to … drum roll please … pre-cook them in the microwave!

Spread out our little potato friends on 2 or 3 folded wet paper towels on your microwave dish, top them with a few more layers of wet paper towels and cook them for 7-8 minutes.

While they are cooking melt 4 to 6 tablespoons of butter in a large skillet and cut a medium size sweet onion into large chunks ( ⅜ to ½ inch ).

Since these potatoes are a side dish, chances are you have several other things going on. It doesn’t hurt to keep the potatoes in the microwave while you are multitasking. They will stay warm and not dry out sandwiched between the wet paper towels.

When it’s time to finish them, turn the heat up on your skillet, add the potatoes and onions, stirring occasionally. Since the potatoes are precooked, all we need to do now is make sure they get crispy skins and the onions get cooked. (Did I mention this smells delicious?)

When the potato skins start to crisped and the onions are cooked, add a little seasoned salt, some coarse ground black pepper, then grab your block of good parmesan cheese and grate it over the potatoes.

Badda Bing, Badda Boom … tasty, delicious potatoes!