Save This Recipe
We'll email this post to you, so you can come back to it later!
Four ingredients. That’s it — carrots, Potatoes, butter, and salt — and this simple Amish-style Casserole is one of the most satisfying side dishes I make. It doesn’t look like much going into the oven, but give it time and something almost magical happens: the edges caramelize, the butter concentrates in the bottom of the dish, and the whole thing tastes like you did a lot more work than you actually did. Slow oven. That’s the whole secret.
Why You’ll Love This
Just 4 ingredients — carrots, potatoes, butter, salt. That’s the whole list, and nothing is missing.
Tastes like so much more than it is — slow roasting does something to butter and vegetables that no amount of spices can shortcut. People always think you added something secret.
Completely hands-off — toss it together, cover it, let the oven do the work. You stir it twice. That’s your job.
Caramelized edges, buttery center — the foil-off second half of the bake is where everything gets good: golden spots, jammy carrots, tender potatoes soaking in pan juices.
Great for a crowd — holds well on the table, reheats beautifully, and goes next to just about any protein you’re already making.
A Word About the Ingredients
Carrots. Get the regular ones, not the baby carrots. I know it seems like it shouldn’t matter, but baby carrots have more water in them and they cook differently. The thick sticks are what you want — about half an inch wide, two or three inches long. They hold their shape and the edges go almost jammy when they caramelize. A mix of orange and yellow carrots works well if you can find them at the farmstand — it looks pretty, though it doesn’t change the taste much.
Yukon Gold potatoes. I’ve made this with russets in a pinch and it’s fine, but Yukons are buttery and waxy and they don’t fall apart. Leave the skins on. I used to peel potatoes out of habit, for years, and one of my kids finally asked me why and I didn’t have a good answer. The skin has texture and it holds things together.
Butter.Unsalted, so you can control the salt yourself. Six tablespoons sounds like a lot. It is a lot. That’s the point. You could use four with a splash of water if you’re trying to lighten it up — I’ve done it — but it’s not the same. It’s good, it’s just not the same.
Salt. Kosher salt, stirred into the butter so it distributes evenly. That’s it. That’s the whole list.
Ingredients
– 1½ pounds carrots, peeled and cut into thick sticks
– 1½ pounds Yukon Gold potatoes, scrubbed and cut into roughly 1-inch chunks (skins on)
– 6 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted — plus just a little extra to grease the dish
– 1½ teaspoons kosher salt
Let’s Make It
Preheat your oven to 400°F. While it heats up, rub a small knob of butter around the inside of a medium Casserole dish — something in the 2 to 2½ quart range works well, and if you have a white one with a lid, use it. I don’t know why the white dish feels right for this but it does.
Prep your vegetables. Peel the carrots and cut them into sticks — not too thin, you’re not making matchsticks, you want something substantial that will hold up in the oven. For the potatoes, just scrub them well and cut them into chunks, roughly the same size as the carrot pieces so everything finishes at the same time. I have made the mistake of cutting the potatoes too big and having carrots that are caramelized and perfect next to potatoes that are still a little raw in the center. Don’t do that.
Put everything into the buttered dish and spread it out into as even a layer as you can manage. You don’t want it piled up too high. Vegetables steam when they’re crowded and you want them to roast, which is a different thing entirely — it’s the difference between soft and a little bit sad versus golden and sweet.
Melt your butter, stir in the salt, pour it over the whole dish. Use your hands or a big spoon to toss everything around until all the pieces look coated and glossy. It’ll look like too much butter. It isn’t.
Cover the dish tightly with foil — and I mean tightly, you want the steam trapped in there to soften the vegetables first — and put it on the middle rack. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes covered, just until you can pierce the carrots with a knife tip and feel them starting to give.
Now here’s the part I always forget to warn people about: carefully peel back the foil because the steam that comes out will absolutely get you if you’re not paying attention. I burned my wrist doing this probably five times before I learned to use a dish towel and turn my face away. Stir everything around to re-coat with the butter in the bottom of the dish. Put it back in the oven uncovered.
Bake another 25 to 35 minutes, stirring once more around the halfway mark. What you’re waiting for is golden-brown spots on the vegetable edges and a little bit of caramelization along the sides and bottom of the dish. The potatoes should be completely tender, not just soft — you should be able to cut them with the side of a fork. Total oven time is somewhere between 50 and 65 minutes depending on your oven and how big your pieces are.
Taste a potato before you pull it out. Adjust salt if you need to, though I usually don’t. Bring the whole dish to the table and spoon the buttery pan juices over everyone’s portion. That’s the best part, those juices.
Variations
I have tested the lighter version — four tablespoons of butter plus two tablespoons of water in the dish — and it’s good, just a little flatter. Worth knowing if you’re watching richness, but it’s not quite the same dish.
If you want more caramelized edges on the carrots, cut them thinner. If you want the potatoes to have more of a crispy outside and tender inside, keep the chunks slightly larger and make sure they’re in a single layer. These are small adjustments within the spirit of the thing.
One version I’ve seen is adding a drizzle of honey at the end of roasting — just a little, maybe a tablespoon over the whole dish. It’s good. It shifts the dish slightly sweet, which goes nicely with ham. But that’s technically five ingredients and I feel obligated to mention it like a footnote rather than an official variation.
Leftovers
Store them in a covered container in the refrigerator. They’re best within three or four days, though honestly they rarely last that long. The next morning, scrape them into a hot skillet with a little butter and let them crisp back up for ten minutes or so — the potatoes especially get good again with a little heat under them. Put a fried egg on top. That’s not a recipe so much as just good sense.
If you’re reheating for dinner, the oven is better than the microwave. Maybe 325°F for fifteen minutes. The microwave makes the potatoes gummy and I have strong feelings about this.
Carrots, potatoes, butter, salt — low and slow. I’m not sure it needs to say more than that. Some things just work, and you don’t always know why, and after a while you stop needing to know.
Serve it next to roasted Chicken or baked ham or really anything that doesn’t need to compete with it. A green salad. Some rolls. Something simple on the side of something simpler. That’s the whole idea.
Oven Baked 4-Ingredients Amish Carrot and Potato Roast
Ingredients
- 1 1/2 lb carrots peeled and cut into thick sticks
- 1 1/2 lb Yukon Gold potatoes scrubbed, skins on, cut into roughly 1-inch chunks
- 6 tbsp unsalted butter melted, plus more for greasing
- 1 1/2 tsp kosher salt plus more to taste
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 400°F.
- Grease a 2- to 2 1/2-quart casserole dish with a small amount of butter.
- Peel the carrots and cut them into thick sticks.
- Scrub the Yukon Gold potatoes and cut them into roughly 1-inch chunks.
- Add the carrots and potatoes to the prepared casserole dish and spread them into an even layer without piling them too high.
- Stir the kosher salt into the melted butter.
- Pour the salted butter over the carrots and potatoes.
- Toss until all the vegetables are evenly coated and glossy.
- Cover the dish tightly with foil.
- Bake covered on the middle rack for 25–30 minutes, until the carrots are beginning to soften.
- Carefully remove the foil, tilting it away from your face to release steam safely.
- Stir the vegetables to re-coat them with the butter in the bottom of the dish.
- Return the dish to the oven uncovered.
- Bake for another 25–35 minutes, stirring once halfway through, until the vegetables are tender with golden-brown edges and light caramelization.
- Taste a potato and adjust salt if needed.
- Serve warm with the buttery pan juices spooned over each portion.