Potato Stacks Are The Crispy Side Dish You've Been Missing

How many ways can you cook a potato? You can mash them up into mashed potatoes, bake them whole, or fry them for crispy French fry goodness. The possibilities truly are endless. But potato stacks? Now that's something worth talking about and making. Stat.

So potato stacks are essentially sliced potatoes that are stacked on top of each other, then baked until they become crispy, per Southern Living. The potatoes are sliced into rounds with a knife or a mandoline, typically about a 16th of an inch in thickness (though Half-Baked Harvest mentions that an eighth is fine too). A mixture of butter, some seasonings, herbs, and olive oil are used to add richness and flavor to the potato slices via a quick coating. The latter source also recommends incorporating some kind of cheesy elements, such as sharp cheddar or gruyere.

The slices are then stacked into small pillars of potatoes within a muffin tin. When each muffin cup is filled with stacked potatoes, pop the muffin tin in a preheated oven (temperature varies by recipe, but we've found 375 to 425 degrees Fahrenheit to be the norm) and then bake the potatoes to a golden-brown color. This will take anywhere between 25 and 55 minutes, depending on how hot your oven is, via Food Network.

As you can probably tell, potato stacks are easy to make and will, of course, be super flavorful once they're done cooling. But for even more crispiness and flavor, we recommend the following cooking hack.

Textural contrast seems much more apparent when you fry potato stacks, as they showcase crispiness, creaminess, and a golden-brown aesthetic, per Kitchn. The prep is slightly different compared to the roasting method above. As Idaho Potato discusses, thinly-sliced potatoes are stacked together, then sliced into rectangular shapes. These stacks are fried in oil, then seasoned with some salt (or garlic parmesan herb seasoning, per TikTok user moribyan) for the ultimate layered potato bite.

Poppycooks via TikTok offers their own perspective à la their 15-hour potato recipe, as they first massage beef drippings into sliced potatoes, then proceed to layer them one at a time in a loaf pan that appears to be lined with parchment paper. The potatoes are then topped with a layer of parchment paper and baked for three hours in a 250 degrees Fahrenheit oven.

Once the loaf pan has cooled down, take three unopened cans of food (such as canned beans) and place them on top of the parchment paper. Pop the loaf pan in the fridge and let the weight of the cans work its magic for 10 to 12 hours, per TikTok's Poppycooks. The potatoes are ready to be sliced into rectangular shapes and fried in hot oil (325 degrees Fahrenheit) until crispiness/color are achieved, per Kitchn.

The hallmark of a heavenly potato stack lies in its texture, and if you really want a party in your mouth, it's worth the effort to layer sliced potatoes together, then fry them.