Potato Kugel (Edit recipe)

Two things make or break this, and both are easy to skip. Heat the oiled pan in the oven before the batter goes in, and purée the onions instead of grating them. The hot pan is what gives you a crust on the bottom rather than a soggy layer. The puréed onion is so you don’t bite into crunchy onion in the middle — grated won’t break down in time, even over two hours. Five pounds of potatoes and up to two hours in the oven. This is a feed-a-crowd dish, not a weeknight one.