Funeral potatoes

In my culture everyone helps out neighbors with funerals. One of the things we do is feed their visiting family members who've traveled far. The most famous thing we feed them is a dish called funeral potatoes. One explanation is that by having a standard recipe that's widely passed around, helpful neighbors don't get into trouble quality-wise or food sanitation-wise.

Yield

Roughly one of those low-profile, 13×8 Pyrex dishes.

Ingredients

3 lbs	potatoes, grated
1 tbsp	oil
4 tbsp	butter
1 cup	grated onion
—	salt and fresh-ground pepper
2 tsp	garlic, minced
2 cups	sour cream
1 can	Cream of Chicken (or other velouté, small can)
1 cup	grated cheese
—	Panko bread crumbs

0. Microwave hashbrown or other potatoes to cook partially—right in the bag. This will take from 6-10 minutes.

1. Clarify onion in oil and 1 tbsp butter, and some salt over medium heat, add garlic 30 seconds before then mixing in sour cream and remaining 3 tbps butter.

2. When smooth, fold in potatoes, continue to heat. Fold in cheese.

3. Put mixture into a buttered Pyrex pan, 13"×9" and cover tightly with foil.

4. Bake 60 minutes at 325°.

5. Remove foil, top with bread crumbs and brown carefully on middle rack under broiler for 3-5 minutes.

Surprisingly, though edible, this dish is not that good the next day. If you add more liquid ingredients (like sour cream and soup), it may continue to be suitably edible the next day because it was a little soupier on the first day.