Description
This Cheesy Ranch Potatoes and Smoked Sausage recipe is the ultimate comfort food! Baby potatoes are tossed in ranch seasoning and roasted with sliced smoked sausage until golden and crispy, then topped with melted cheddar cheese. It’s an easy one-pan meal that’s perfect for busy weeknights, requires minimal prep, and delivers maximum flavor.
Ingredients
For the Potatoes and Sausage:
- 1½ lbs baby potatoes, quartered (or russet potatoes, diced)
- 1 lb smoked sausage, sliced
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
For the Seasoning:
- 1 packet (1 oz) ranch seasoning mix
- 1 teaspoon garlic powder
- ½ teaspoon paprika
- ½ teaspoon black pepper
For the Topping:
- 1½ cups shredded cheddar cheese
- ¼ cup chopped parsley (optional, for garnish)
Instructions
Turn oven to 400°F. Spray your pan or rub oil on it so stuff doesn’t weld itself to the bottom.
Forgot this once, spent the rest of my night with steel wool and regret.
Potatoes in a bowl. Oil, ranch powder, garlic powder, paprika, pepper on top. Mix with your hands – gets everything coated better than a spoon.
My kid does this part now because she likes getting messy and I like not doing it.
Spread potatoes in the pan. Try to keep them mostly one layer deep or they’ll steam instead of roast. Steamed potatoes have no business being in this recipe.
Toss sausage on top. It’ll leak its smoky grease down into everything while it cooks.
Oven for 35-40 minutes. Set your phone timer for 20 minutes or you’ll forget to stir and end up with charcoal on the bottom.
Stir means flip everything around with a spatula. Bottom goes to top, top goes to bottom. Makes it cook even instead of burning half and leaving the other half raw.
Done when you can stab a potato with a fork easy and there’s brown crusty bits showing up.
Pull it out with oven mitts because apparently I need to say this or someone will grab it barehanded. Dump cheese everywhere. Back in for 5-7 minutes.
Watch it these last few minutes. Cheese melts fast then burns faster. Melted and bubbly is good, brown and smoking is bad.
Wait a minute so you don’t burn the roof of your mouth off. Parsley if you care about it looking pretty for photos or whatever.
Notes
You can mix up the cheese – pepper jack if you like heat, or a Mexican blend, or even some crumbled feta. I’ve tried all of them.
Want to save time? Season the potatoes and add the sausage the night before. Cover it and stick it in the fridge. Next day, just bake it – add maybe 5 extra minutes since it’s cold.
Make sure your oven is hot before the pan goes in. A cold oven makes soggy potatoes.
Test doneness with a fork. It should slide in pretty easily but not make the potato fall apart completely.
- Prep Time: 10 minutes
- Cook Time: 45 minutes
- Category: Main Dish
- Method: Baking
- Cuisine: American