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Just three ingredients — russet potatoes, salted butter, and heavy cream — and your Slow Cooker does all the work. These creamy, layered potatoes come out silky and rich every time, with almost zero effort on your part.
Why You’ll Love It
Only 3 ingredients — potatoes, butter, and cream. That’s the whole list.
Completely hands-off — set the Slow Cooker and walk away for hours while it does its thing.
Better flavor with the skins on — no peeling required, and the texture is more interesting for it.
Built-in serving vessel — it goes straight from the cooker to the table, one less dish to worry about.
Leftovers are genuinely great — the flavors deepen overnight and reheat beautifully.
A Note on the Ingredients
Russet potatoes. Not Yukon Gold, not those cute little baby potatoes in the mesh bag. Russets. They’re starchy, they’re sturdy, they hold their shape through hours of slow cooking without dissolving, and they absorb the cream and butter in a way that waxy potatoes just don’t. I scrub them well and leave the skins on — don’t peel them, please, even if it makes you nervous. The skin softens completely and adds something that I can’t quite describe, a kind of earthiness that keeps the whole dish from being just pure richness.
Salted butter. I know, I know. Every baking recipe tells you unsalted. But this is a slow-cooked savory potato situation, and salted butter does something important here. It seasons as it melts. I use Land O’Lakes because that’s what my mother bought and I never really questioned it.
Heavy cream. Not half-and-half, not cream that’s been sitting in the back of your fridge for eleven days — fresh, real heavy cream. A cup. It sounds indulgent. It is indulgent. This is a holiday side dish.
Ingredients
3 pounds russet potatoes, scrubbed, unpeeled, sliced thin — about an eighth to a quarter inch, though I eyeball it and they always turn out fine
1 cup heavy cream
6 tablespoons salted butter, cut into small pieces, plus just a smear more to grease the cooker
Let’s Make Them
First, grease your Slow Cooker. Just take a little nub of butter and rub it around the bottom and up the sides — this helps things not stick and also gives the edges a chance to get a little golden, which doesn’t always happen but when it does, it’s a bonus.
Scrub your potatoes well. I run them under cold water and use one of those vegetable brush things — mine is yellow and I’ve had it so long that the bristles are a little splayed out, but it still works. No need to peel. Dry them off and slice them thin. I use a sharp knife and try to keep the slices roughly even, but I’m not obsessive about it. If some are thicker than others, they just have a little more bite. That’s fine.
Layer the slices into the Slow Cooker. You don’t need to be precious about this — just pile them in, loosely shingle them so the cream can get between the layers. Pour the cream over the top slowly. Dot everything with the butter pieces.
Put the lid on. That’s it.
If you’re cooking on HIGH, plan for three to four hours. LOW, six to seven. My cooker runs a little hot, so I always check around the three-hour mark on HIGH — you want a fork to slide through the slices easily, with no resistance. The cream and butter will have thickened into something almost saucy by then, which is exactly what you want.
When they’re done, I stir the top layer very gently — just to coat things — and then I switch the cooker to WARM and leave it alone for another ten or fifteen minutes. This seems like an unnecessary step and I skipped it for the first couple years, but it really does let the sauce settle and thicken a little more. Now I don’t skip it.
Salt and pepper at the table, to taste.
Variations
Some people like to throw a handful of shredded Gruyère into the cooker about twenty minutes before they’re done. It melts in beautifully and gives the sauce this slightly nutty depth. A whole cheese phase waiting to happen.
A layer of very thin-sliced onion between the potato layers is also worth trying. It sweetens up significantly and almost disappears into the sauce, which is nice if you want more complexity without announcing it. Good if you’re feeding people who claim not to like onions but are wrong.
For the purists, just set out some chopped fresh chives or parsley in a little bowl and let people help themselves. It brightens things up and makes it look like you planned more than you did.
Storage & What to Do With Leftovers
They keep in the fridge for three or four days, covered. I usually just leave them right in the slow cooker insert with the lid on, which probably isn’t the best practice but it’s what I do. Reheat in a low oven — covered with foil — or just microwave individual portions. The sauce firms up when cold, which actually makes the leftovers weirdly good: the potatoes hold together better, the flavors deepen, and I have eaten them cold, standing at the open refrigerator, on at least two occasions that I will not be expanding on here.
Serve these next to a turkey, a ham, anything with a bone in it. A good green vegetable on the side. Maybe rolls if you feel like it, though by the time this dish is done you probably won’t want to deal with rolls.
Slow Cooker Holiday Potatoes
Ingredients
- 3 lb russet potatoes scrubbed, unpeeled, thinly sliced
- 1 cup heavy cream
- 6 tbsp salted butter cut into pieces, plus extra for greasing
Instructions
- Grease the inside of the slow cooker with a small amount of butter.
- Scrub potatoes well, dry them, and slice thin (about 1/8 to 1/4 inch).
- Layer the sliced potatoes into the slow cooker, slightly overlapping.
- Pour heavy cream evenly over the potatoes and dot with butter pieces.
- Cover and cook on HIGH for 3–4 hours or LOW for 6–7 hours until fork-tender.
- Gently stir the top layer and let sit on WARM for 10–15 minutes to thicken.
- Season with salt and pepper just before serving.
