Save This Recipe
We'll email this post to you, so you can come back to it later!
These individual Potato Au gratin cups bake in a muffin tin and come out golden, creamy, and perfectly portioned every single time. Four ingredients — potatoes, cream, onion, and cheese — and they look like you spent hours. You didn’t. That’s the whole point.
Why You’ll Love These
- Only 4 ingredients — potatoes, cream, onion, and cheese, with salt and pepper to season. That’s it.
- Individual portions, no messy slicing — everyone gets a golden edge and a creamy center. No fighting over the corner piece.
- Impressive enough for company — they come out of the tin looking elegant, like you put in a lot more effort than you actually did.
- Great make-ahead option — they reheat beautifully and hold their shape, which makes them perfect for holiday dinners or busy weeknights.
A Word About the Ingredients
Russet potatoes. Not Yukon Gold, not red-skinned — russet. I know everyone wants to argue about this and reach for the Yukons because they’re waxy and hold together, but the starchier russet is what you want here. It soaks up that cream and gets soft and yielding in a way that feels right.
The cream should be real heavy cream. Half-and-half will work in a pinch but the cups won’t be quite as rich and they’ll weep a little more liquid into the tin, which is fine, just not quite the same thing. I have used half-and-half when I was out of cream and didn’t want to run to the store. It was still good. I’m just telling you the truth.
The onion should be very, very finely minced — or grated, if you want it to almost disappear into the cream. I’ve done it both ways. Grated is a little more subtle, minced gives you the occasional tiny pop of onion flavor. Either is right. Neither is wrong.
Cheese: mild cheddar. You could use Colby, you could use a young Swiss — I’ve done both and they work — but there’s something about mild cheddar that’s just correct for this era, this recipe, this feeling you’re going for. Sharp cheddar can get a little oily at high heat, in my experience. The mild stuff melts beautifully.
Ingredients
- 2 pounds russet potatoes, peeled and very thinly sliced
- 1½ cups heavy cream
- ¼ cup very finely minced yellow onion (or grate it — see notes)
- 2 cups shredded mild cheddar cheese, divided
- 1 teaspoon kosher salt
- ½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
- Butter or neutral oil, for greasing the tin
Instructions
Preheat the oven to 375°F. Grease your muffin tin well — sides and bottoms — with butter or oil. This step matters more than you’d think. I’ve skipped it once or twice when I was in a hurry and regretted it both times.
Peel and slice the potatoes as thin as you can get them, about ⅛ inch or thinner. A mandoline is the right tool for this — please use the guard, I’m serious, those things are no joke — but a sharp knife works too, it just takes longer and you’ll end up with a little more variation in thickness, which is fine. The thinner the slice, the better the layers, but I’ve made this with imperfect slices plenty of times and it still came out lovely.
In a small bowl or measuring cup, stir together the cream, minced onion, salt, and pepper. That’s your seasoning mixture. It’s almost laughably simple and it does exactly what it needs to do.
Now, take about half your shredded cheese — 1 cup — and sprinkle it into the bottoms of the muffin cups. Try to divide it somewhat evenly. This cheese will melt against the tin and form that golden, slightly crispy edge I mentioned, and it’s arguably the best part.
Layer your potato slices into each cup, pressing down as you go. Fan them slightly, layer them, make it work — the goal is to fill each cup just to the top with as many overlapping slices as you can fit. It doesn’t have to be perfect. It really doesn’t.
Give the cream mixture a stir, then spoon it slowly over each cup, letting it seep down between the potato layers. Go slowly here. If you pour too fast it’ll overflow everywhere and you’ll have a mess on your baking sheet. (Set the muffin tin on a rimmed baking sheet before it goes in the oven, by the way. I should have said that earlier. Just in case.)
Top each cup with the remaining cheese — the other cup of cheddar, divided among the twelve. This is the layer that gets golden and bubbling and gorgeous.
Bake on the middle rack for 35 to 45 minutes, until the tops are deeply golden and a knife pierces the potato layers easily. Mine usually hit the right spot around 40 minutes, but ovens vary.
Here is the part people skip and shouldn’t: let them rest in the pan for at least 10 minutes after they come out of the oven. The cream needs to set. If you try to lift them out while they’re still furiously bubbling, they’ll fall apart on you.
Run a thin knife or small offset spatula around the edge of each cup, then lift gently and transfer to a serving platter.
Variations
One variation worth trying: a little garlic in the cream. Just half a clove, grated fine. It’s not in the original recipe, but it’s good. It doesn’t take it that far from the original. You’ve been warned.
If you want a milder onion presence, grate the onion on the fine side of a box grater instead of mincing it. It’ll almost melt into the cream and you won’t get those little pieces — just the flavor. Some people prefer that. I go back and forth.
Storage and Reheating
Refrigerate leftovers within two hours of baking, covered. They keep well for a few days. To reheat, I put them in a 350°F oven, loosely covered with foil, for about 15 minutes until they’re hot through. You can microwave them if you have to but the edges get a little rubbery, so the oven is worth it when you have the time.
I’ve also made a full batch ahead, baked them until just tender, then cooled and refrigerated them overnight. The next day I put them back in the oven to finish and get those golden tops. Works beautifully if you’re pulling together a big dinner and want to get ahead of it.
Final Notes
These potato cups have been on my holiday table for years now, and they’ve made it onto plenty of weeknight dinner plates too. Once you make them the first time, you’ll understand why they stuck around.
I don’t have too many things that feel exactly right. These do
Oven-Baked 4-Ingredient Potato Au Gratin Cups
Ingredients
- 2 lb russet potatoes peeled and very thinly sliced
- 1 1/2 cups heavy cream
- 1/4 cup yellow onion very finely minced or grated
- 2 cups shredded mild cheddar cheese divided
- 1 tsp kosher salt
- 1/2 tsp black pepper freshly ground
- butter or neutral oil for greasing the muffin tin
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 375°F and grease a 12-cup muffin tin well with butter or neutral oil.
- Place the muffin tin on a rimmed baking sheet to catch any overflow.
- Peel the potatoes and slice them very thinly, about 1/8 inch thick or thinner.
- In a small bowl or measuring cup, stir together the heavy cream, minced onion, kosher salt, and black pepper.
- Sprinkle 1 cup of shredded cheddar cheese evenly into the bottoms of the muffin cups.
- Layer the potato slices into each muffin cup, pressing down gently and filling each cup to the top.
- Stir the cream mixture again, then slowly spoon it over each potato cup, allowing it to seep between the layers.
- Top each cup with the remaining 1 cup of shredded cheddar cheese.
- Bake on the middle rack for 35–45 minutes, until the tops are deeply golden and a knife pierces the potatoes easily.
- Let the au gratin cups rest in the pan for at least 10 minutes.
- Run a thin knife or small offset spatula around each cup, then gently lift and transfer to a serving platter.