Potato Pie with Bacon
This is a kugel-style potato pie, cousin to the potato pancake but baked as one slab and cut into wedges. The body is raw potato — 1.5 kg, a little over three pounds — grated fine, and what holds it together is stale white bread soaked in hot milk. The milk breaks the crumb into a paste that traps the potato’s own juice, which would otherwise pool in the bottom of the pan.
Salo is cured pork fatback, a staple eaten sliced across Ukraine; diced and rendered, it does exactly what bacon fat does in an American kitchen, and unsmoked slab bacon or fatback swaps in directly. Its 250 g is both fat and seasoning, basting the mixture from within so it survives two hours in the oven without drying. That long bake is the point: it turns shredded potato into one tender texture rather than distinct layers. The nutmeg is no whim but the standard partner to potato across Central Europe, cutting the richness.
- Squeeze the grated potato lightly; extra water makes the pie soggy and stretches the baking time.
- Put the foil on from the start, then pull it off for the last 15 to 20 minutes so the top colors without scorching.
Serve hot with sour cream, garlic sauce or fried onion. Cold slices fry up beautifully the next day, with crisp edges.
Part of Ukrainian cuisine — 464 more recipes in the section.
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Ingredients
Instructions
Soak the bread in the hot milk.
Cut the pork fat into small cubes and render it.
Peel the potatoes, grate them on the fine side of a grater, and mix with the rendered fat and the soaked bread.
Season with salt, pepper, and nutmeg.
Spread the mixture in a greased pan and bake in the oven for about 2 hours.
To keep the top of the pie from burning, cover it with foil.
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