This Slow Cooker Sausage & Potato Casserole is a comforting weeknight meal that loads up on flavor while skipping the canned cream of chicken soup. This hearty and delicious crockpot meal is an easy recipe the whole family will love, combining cheesy potatoes with flavorful sausage.
Why You’ll Love This Slow Cooker Sausage Casserole:
- Simple Ingredients: Everything in this dish should be easy to find at your local grocery store, so you can whip up this casserole without any hassle.
- Effortless Preparation: Spend just a few minutes in the kitchen, and let your slow cooker do the rest of the work. Perfect for a busy day!
- Creamy and Flavorful: The combination of savory sausage, cheesy goodness, and creamy sauce makes this casserole one the entire family can agree on.
Let's Get Started! Here's What You'll Need:
Ingredients:
- Smoked Sausage- I'm using Kielbasa, but any precooked type of sausage will work. Andouille sausage is a great choice, or cooked chicken sausage if you want a lighter meat.
- Frozen hash brown potatoes- also called frozen diced potatoes. You could also dice your own and use fresh if that's what you have, though it may impact your cook time.
- Shredded cheddar cheese- shredding your own does melt better, but we're cooking this long enough that the pre-shredded bags will do fine too.
- Small onion- I reach for yellow, but a white onion or even sweet onion would be great. You can substitute a tablespoon of onion powder if your onion has gone bad.
- Chicken broth- Either canned, homemade, or from a chicken bouillon cube.
- Corn starch- this is our thickening agent. It plus the broth replaces the canned cream soup.
- Sour cream- this gives our casserole a creamy richness that brings it all together.
- Garlic powder- you can also use fresh garlic if you prefer.
- Sea salt & black pepper- these are flexible to taste, I'm using a teaspoon of each.
Equipment:
We'll of course need our handy dandy slow cooker, beyond that we'll need a medium bowl or large graduated measuring cup, and you guessed it, measuring cups and spoons. Oh, and a fork, and spatula. If you grate your own cheese you'll also need a grater, but as you'll see in the next photo I typically use preshredded for this dish.
Optionally, you could use a slow cooker liner since this IS a dish that tends to stick to the sides a bit. If not, you'll want to grease your ceramic insert with nonstick spray, oil, or butter.
How to Make This Kielbasa Sausage & Potatoes Recipe:
Step 1: Prepare Creamy Mixture
In a seperate bowl from the crock pot, whisk the corn starch into room temperature chicken broth until fully combined. The broth will be white and cloudy with it, but you shouldn't see any clumps. Then add your sour cream to the mixture and continue whisking until mostly smooth. It's okay to have some small clumps of sour cream since that will melt during cooking.
Step 2: Assemble in Slow Cooker
Next, dice your onions and sausage into bite-size pieces. Then combine hash browns, kielbasa, onion, and 1 ½ cups of the cheese in your lined or greased slow cooker. Sprinkle garlic powder, salt, and pepper on top, then pour the broth and cream mixture over the ingredients. Stir well to ensure everything is evenly coated. Top the casserole with the final ½ cup of shredded cheddar.
Step 3: Slow Cook
Set your slow cooker to LOW for 6-8 hours or HIGH for 3-4 hours. Try to ignore how good your house smells the last few hours!
Step 4: Serve and Enjoy
Once your potatoes are fork tender, scoop out generous portions of the Sausage & Potato Casserole onto plates and serve hot. If you have leftovers be sure to store them in an airtight container.
FAQs:
Yes, though some you may want to add later in the cooking process, and keep in mind that vegetables will release liquid as they cook, so you may need to reduce the amount of chicken broth as well. For carrots I would add them in the beginning and cut back on the broth by half a cup, for fresh green beans I'd add them in the last hour or two to maintain some of their crispness. This is already a complete meal with the onion, but the dish is definitely versatile enough to take some additional veggies.
Of course. Just skip the broth and corn starch and use that instead. You'll still want to mix it with the sour cream in a separate bowl before adding it to the slow cooker. I'd also omit the salt since there is so much in canned soup.
Anytime! It's great for an easy dinner, but has a breakfast vibe too- especially if you add a side of eggs. Roll it up leftovers with some scrambled ones for a delicious breakfast burrito!
Looking for more easy slow cooker recipes?
The best slow cooker meals in my book are the ones where you can dump and go. A few top choices are pulled pork, lemon pepper chicken thighs, and Italian style pepper steak.
I hope you love this simple and savory Slow Cooker Sausage & Potato Casserole, and that it becomes a family favorite in your house. If so be sure to come back and rate or review this recipe, I love hearing how it went for you.
📖 Recipe
Slow Cooker Sausage & Potato Casserole: No Canned Soup
Ingredients
- 14 oz kielbasa 1 smoked sausage
- 32 oz frozen hash brown potatoes
- 8 oz cheddar cheese shredded
- 1 small onion
- 14 oz chicken broth 1 can
- 3 tablespoon corn starch
- ⅔ cup sour cream
- 1 tablespoon garlic powder
- 1 teaspoon black pepper
- 1 teaspoon sea salt
Instructions
- Whisk corn starch into room temperature chicken broth with a fork or whisk. Once fully combined add sour cream to mixture as well.
- Cut onion and smoked sausage into bite size pieces.
- Add all remaining ingredients to slow cooker, except for ½ cup of shredded cheddar to top dish with.
- Pour broth and cream mixture into the crockpot and stir well. Top with final ½ cup cheese and cook on LOW for 6-8 hours or HIGH 3-4 hours.
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Notes
Nutrition
Nutrition information is provided as a courtesy and is an estimate. It is recommended to use your preferred calculator with the actual ingredients you use for optimal accuracy.
Sheila says
This was delicious. Next time I'll make it for a brunch!
Anne Aslanides says
I'm so glad to hear that Sheila! I hope you have a fantastic brunch!
Melissa M. says
My family loves this recipe! I make a fried egg on top of each of our servings, all of that sausage potato goodness along with some runny yolk and fried egg, it's so delicious! Thank you so much for sharing this recipe! 👍😋😃
Anne Aslanides says
I'm so glad your family enjoys it Melissa! Fried eggs are a fantastic addition!
Mary Pound says
This sounds delirious. Can I use vegetable broth instead of chicken, do you think? We are Allergic to anything with chicken in it. That’s why this recipe is so attractive, it doesn’t use cream of chicken soup! Would the vegetable broth alter the taste too much? And, can I just use a disposable liner instead of greasing the crock? Thank you, Mary
Anne Aslanides says
Vegetable broth (or beef broth) would be just fine- we just want more flavor than plain water. Stirring might take a little more patience with a liner, but I don't see why you couldn't! Hope you love it Mary!
Linda says
Did exactly as recipe said, but found it did not have a lot of flavor. The potatoes simply mushed together, need a bigger punch of something.
Anne Aslanides says
I'm sorry to hear it wasn't a home run for you Linda! You can certainly include more or additional seasonings to your taste. For the potatoes it sounds like your slow cooker might run hot- if it cooks longer than needed the potatoes can get very soft, I have had that happen with reheating the leftovers.