At home or out in the wild–this comfort food is so simple to make it’ll be your next favorite meal. 

When it comes to cooking, here in the SoraKitchen we understand just as well as anyone how necessary it is to have simple meals on rotation. Who has time to spend two hours in the kitchen every night?

That’s why we love the YouTube channel Ken Outdoor Cooking, because not only are their recipes great for camping, they’re made with simple ingredients and are super easy to cook, which means you can make them at home too.

The recipe we’d like to share today is a very simple gratin, a baked dish with a nice browned top. It’s so simple, quick, hands-off, and delicious, it might become one of your favorites!

Ingredients
150 grams (5.3 ounces) frozen asparagus
160 grams (5.6 ounces) white sauce (we went a little crazy and used 290 grams)
40 grams (1.4 ounces) bacon
Mixed cheese as desired (we used “Cheese for Pizza”)
Olive oil as desired
Black pepper as desired

Directions

1. Defrost your frozen asparagus and cut it into quarters. Ours was already pre-cut, so we used it as is.

2. Thinly slice your bacon.

3. Heat a frying pan over medium-low heat, add olive oil and bacon and cook to desired crispiness.

4. Keep aside five each of the tips and stalks of the asparagus for decoration. For the stems, you can use the blunt ends or center pieces. We chose these.

5. Use a paper towel to soak up the excess oil in the pan…

Then add the remaining asparagus pieces to the pan and fry.

Lightly pepper.

6. Add the white sauce and mix slightly.

According to the recipe, you’d only need half of this can, but the pan was big enough to fit it all, so we said, “Why not?!” and poured it all in.

7. Assemble your decorative asparagus pieces. We made ours look like we’d tried to cram super long stalks into the pan. It wasn’t intentional, but it worked out.

8. Sprinkle cheese over the whole thing…

Cover it, and cook for four minutes.

Once the cheese has melted, it’s done!

If you want to be extra fancy and you have a blow torch on hand, you can give it that nice char that makes it look positively mouthwatering.

And voila! Here’s our super easy stovetop asparagus gratin.

Since we used a skillet to cook it, it came out to be a huge portion size. But that was fine, because with the canned white sauce and frozen asparagus it was super easy to make, especially as our asparagus was already pre-cut. We basically didn’t have to do anything but cook it. The end result looked scrumptious.

The combination of white sauce and cheese was an instant win, and when we took a bite, we could only nod our heads and smile in agreement and appreciation. The use of the blow torch to give it some char was a smart move because it made the dish even more fragrant and delicious.

This is a dish that even someone who has no experience with cooking can easily make, and because it’s so hot and comforting, it’s a great dinner to entertain friends with on a cold winter’s night. Of course, you can make this while camping too, but for days when it’s too cold to brave the tent, this is a delicious at-home meal.

And so we have yet another of Ken Outdoor Cooking’s recipes to add to our toolbelt. If you’re looking for easy, tasty, quick food ideas while camping and at home, definitely check them out!

Reference: Ken Outdoor Cooking
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