Noooo I didn’t cook the kiebalsa beforehand, good idea though! But the flavor it gives to the potatoes is very yummy! I’ve used the turkey kiebalsa before also but it didn’t give as much flavor so I went back to using beef.
When I make this, I cook on Medium for about 6 hours and I just put the kiebalsa on the top of the potatoes the last 1 1/2 hours or so. I use good ole cheddar cheese and some onion and OUA-LA!

This looks like something that calls out for experimentation. If it’s possible to use a crockpot to make scalloped potatoes in the normal way, with regular white sauce and glorious cheese, it’s a discovery that must be known to Civilization.

If you blended evaporated milk with butter and flour, the effect would be to cook the sauce (as it were) over the six or eight hours it sits in the blender. I wonder how it would taste in scalloped potatoes…isn’t it a little sweet? If you added some broth, though — say, it were 50-50 evap milk and broth — it would still be plenty savory.

The duck broth I made is kind of smokey in flavor, because of course I made it with the carcasses of smoked ducks. Thinking duck broth would be interesting, but am concerned the smokey effect could be a bit much.

Mashed potatoes would work. Since I’ll be cooking for 15 people (possibly 18, at last count!) the following day and will not get home much before 12:30 in the morning and will have SDXB underfoot, I’d like to keep the prep and clean-up work to an absolute minimum. Peeling potatoes (please: plug my garbage disposal!), dirtying a boiling pan, hauling out the mixer, and then loading up the crockpot with the stuff…hmmmm. There won’t be any room in the fridge to hold another large container of food. Other complication: SDXB dearly loves mashed potatoes and considers himself to be the reigning expert on the subject. If he sees me trying to make them, he will grab the kitchen and shove me out. Not that I wouldn’t appreciate having someone else make the stuff…it’s the prospect of cleaning up after him and then going out and buying new dishes to replace the ones he breaks that doesn’t appeal.

Interesting: recipe says to combine 2 TBS melted butter, 1/4 cup flour, 1 can evap milk in BLENDER!!!!!! Interesting. So you don’t make a white sauce.

That’s for 6 potatoes.

According to my cookbook, mashed potatoes (made the regular way on stove) can be put in slowcooker and taken to wherever. Mashed potatoes are huge hits at potlucks I’ve noticed.

It may be better to make the sauce with broth — I happen to have a couple containers of home-made chicken broth in the freezer, and I also have more duck broth than I know what to do with.

What if you made the sauce à la mode d’un béchamel but with flour, a good rich broth, and a slug of sherry. Then near the end, add some cream; mix that around gently. I think the gruyère would hold up OK if you added a half-hour before serving, because it wouldn’t have time to break down. It wouldn’t be a traditional scalloped potato, by any means, but then one has already veered from the path with those caramelized onions.