I wanted to do twice baked potatoes for a cookout, but I wasn’t in the mood for cheese. So I thought I’d do the same preparation, but using the ingredients I’d normally put on a baked potato. I wasn’t sure how successful it would be, but everyone said it was better than the normal cheesy kind.
Ingredients
8 large Russet potatoes
1 cup bacon fat
1 cup sour cream
1 large onion
1/2 cup chives
Directions
Insert skewers in the potatoes and put them in a 400 degree oven. You can wrap them in foil, like I did in that link, or do them unwrapped, like I did here. While they bake, melt a couple of tablespoons of bacon fat in a pan. Shred the onion and cook until well browned.
Go through the chives to pull out any dead stems, then dice and set aside.
Dice the onions fairly small.
When the potatoes are done (about 45 minutes to an hour, the skewers come out without resistance) take them out and cut them in half.
Scoop out the inside of each half with a spoon. Leave just enough so that the skin retains it’s shape. Take out a little more than you would if you were making potato skins.
Put the scooped-out potato in the same pan you did the onions in, and add the bacon fat, sour cream and onion. Mash everything together and check if you need salt and pepper.
If you recognize that tool I’m using, it’s the same one I used for the chili a while back. I didn’t want to like it, but I’m finding it makes a bunch of jobs easier. Thanks honey, you were right. (She didn’t read it the first time I said that. I’ll keep bringing it up until she says something about it.)
Once everything is mashed together, add the chives and mix gently. You don’t want to crush the chives and turn the potatoes green.
Scoop the filling back into the skins. Cover tightly with plastic wrap and you can keep these for several days in the refrigerator before cooking them, or freeze them for several weeks. I can’t say exactly how long. This is a brand new recipe and I haven’t kept any of them around that long. When you want to serve them, reheat in the oven or microwave until hot. (See, I can use the microwave.) For a crispy top, finish under the broiler.
And that’s it.
5 Comments
How can you ever NOT be in the mood for cheese? That said, I don’t think I’ve ever used cheese for twice-baked potatoes. I’ve never used onions either, but that looked so good. Our potatoes never get big enough or oblong enough for twice-baking though. Downside to growing your own. But we just used up the last of our leftover seed potatoes, so maybe I’ll get some Russets now and make this recipe.
Kristin, wasn’t that you saying something on your blog about how hard it was pulling up the potatoes? My father-in-law started a couple of years ago doing them on top of the soil, and covering with straw and grass clippings. When it was time to harvest he just raked back the cover and there they were, nice and big, laying on the ground. I’m pretty sure he just put the garden in last week, If he’s doing potatoes again this year I’ll get some pictures.
Kristin makes a good point about how someone can not be in the mood for cheese, but nevertheless, those look amazing. Do you normally save bacon fat to have it on hand for cooking?
Nope, not my blog that whined about harvesting potatoes. I did whine about all the digging to plant them though. I love harvesting them, mostly because my husband does all the hard digging and I just pick them up. It’s like a treasure hunt. What I do hate with a burning passion is hilling those bastards up. But this year I think we’ll use the straw from the sheep barn, so it should be a little easier.
Andy, I sure do. Follow the link from the ingredients to see the page about filtering and storing it.
Kristin, it might have been the planting I was remembering. Either way, my f-i-l doesn’t do any digging to plant or harvest.
For me, though, the only thing that’s worth the effort to grow myself are herbs (because they’re totally low maintenance) and tomatoes, because they’re so much better fresh from the garden.