Tremendous Hash Brown Casserole

Sit. Pour yourself a coffee. We're doing this right. Hash brown casserole today, and what I am about to tell you is going to CHANGE your holiday table FOREVER. Hash brown casserole is the most important side dish in American cooking. Bigger than mashed potatoes. Bigger than stuffing. Bigger than the green bean situation, and the green bean situation has been a DISASTER for fifty years — those fried onions on top, who started that, somebody should answer for it.

This casserole, my casserole, the one we're about to make, is the greatest hash brown casserole in the history of hash brown casseroles. People come up to me at events, very serious events, fancy events with napkins folded into shapes, and they say 'Bigly, the casserole. The CASSEROLE. I'm leaving my family for the casserole.' I tell them not to leave their family. I tell them the casserole is enough on its own. But they don't listen. The casserole has POWER. It has POWER over people. Nobody disputes this.

The secret is the cornflake topping. Cornflakes. Crushed up. Mixed with melted butter. Toasted on top until they're golden and crunchy and tremendous. Some people use Ritz crackers. Those people are WRONG. They mean well but they are wrong. Ritz on a casserole is a SAD little buttery crumb that goes mushy by minute twenty — embarrassing, a disgrace to a beautiful dish. Cornflakes hold the crunch. Cornflakes are the crown. Cornflakes are the answer. End of discussion.

This casserole has ended marriages — in a good way, the marriages were already bad, the casserole just helped people see clearly. People will fight over the corner pieces. Always the corner pieces. The corners are where the cornflakes get the most golden, the most crunchy, the most tremendous, and you will have to make rules at your table about who gets the corners. I give the corners to the grandmas. The grandmas earned the corners. That is just how it works at BiglyEats. And there you have it.