What is your favorite twice-baked potato recipe?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I haven’t had a 2x BP in a few years, and kinda have a taste for one. However, the only one’s I’ve had were made by a friend that has passed from our world.

I do remember it had cheese and bacon and finely diced onion, but other than some ingredients and knowing the spud has to be baked first, I’m lost on how to make one.

I hate sour cream, so if your recipe involves it, let me know if leaving it out will ruin the recipe. Otherwise, help me out here. I’m hungry and have about 70# of free potatoes laying around here.

2
  1. bake a potato
  2. bake it again
  3. go out for dinner.
3

There is an article in this month’s “Cooks Illustrated” about making the best twice-baked potatoes. I’m not sure if I violate any copyrights if I post it, though.

Wander on down to the nearest bookstore and score yourself a copy. :slight_smile:

4

Great response, but I really want to know.

lovelee, I doubt linking to a site would be against the rules if it’s freely available to anyone googling. (Don’t mean to step on any Mod toes)

5

I have no real recipe, but I have made them a few times. After baking the potatoes and cooling them sufficiently so you can handle them, cut off enough of the top to enable you to scoop out the pulp, retaining about a quarter of an inch all around so they have some stability to them. Put the pulp in a bowl and add butter, milk, cream (I confess I would use sour cream), cheese, cream cheese… You get the drift. You could probably even add bacon, onion or chives to this portion as well as on top of the potatoes. It is relatively simple but highly individualized as to what ingredients you like. Mix it to your desired consistency, because some like it smooth and some like it chunky (bits of potato, etc.). If you cut only a topper off the potato (versus cutting them in half), you can even include that, skin and all, in your mash. Mound the mixture back into the potatoes. You can drizzle them with butter, evoo, cheese, broccoli, whatever suits your fancy. Then place them back into the oven (I’d say about 350 degrees) for 15-30 minutes, depending on how cool they were to begin with. Some ingredients would be better placed on the potatoes during the last 5-10 minutes (like the cheese), so they don’t get too dark.

As you can probably tell, I’m kind of a DIY cook, but I’ve never had these turn out badly. You just gotta trust your instincts and keep the light on in your oven! :slight_smile:

Good Luck!

6

I make twice baked potatoes quite often and they usually turn out really well. I always add lots of cheese and a bit of dijon mustard. It sounds strange but they are very good. They only advice I can give you is to be careful not to let them cool too long before scooping. One of the last times I made these, I got distracted while they were cooling. I cut the potatoes in half and noticed that they looked a little icky but I thought “what the hell” :smack: and proceded to scoop and mash. They weren’t mashing well so I just got out the trusty hand mixer and cranked up that bad boy. Just in case you are curious, cold potatoes that are overly mashed turn into a glue-like substance. Twice baked potatoes should NOT require a knife.

7

One useful tip:
Do not wrap the spuds in foil before baking. Spuds cooked this way steam instead of bake. The skins become papery and fragile so they don’t hold together well during the extra handling.

Wash each spud well, then prick a few times with a sharp knife. Lightly oil the outlde of each spud then place them directly on the oven racks. (You can put them on a baking sheet but the bottoms will crisp a bit. No big deal either way.)
When they’re done the skins will be solid enough to act as shells for the fluffy stuffings while still being edible.
Slice off a small cap from the top of each spud; about a third of the top of the spud. Use a metal spoon to scrape the white part off of the inside of the cap, and from inside the spud-shells to about 1/2". Leave just enough so the shells don’t collapse.
Then just mash and doctor the pulp however you like best.
I usually use some hot milk, a titch of butter, plenty of salt & pepper, some finely grated cheese and some snipped chives. (Mashing by hand, even just briskly using a fork, usually works much better than a mixer. That tends to make the filling gluey.) But toss in whatever you like: crisp bacon bits, finely chopped cooked veggies, whatever.
Mound it all lightly back into the spud shells. You might need to squoosh a bit to get the filling tucked into the curves of the shells. It doesn’t matter if the filling mounds above the level of the shell edges; it’ll hold during baking. If you want to add extra butter or shredded cheese to melt on top during baking just make a little trough in the filling tops.
Easy!

8

When making baked potatoes, I never do anything other than wash them well, prick them with a fork a few times (otherwise the potato might explode in the oven from its steam), and throw them in the oven. I know many people oil them, but mine turn out just fine. I WILL wrap them in foil only if they’re going in the coals in the backyard grill.

Twice baked potatoes look fancier with only a silce off the top. However, I find it’s easier to simply cut them in half, the long way, and scoop out most of the innards. As others have noted, don’t use a mixer. I can add, don’t use a blender, either. You will NOT be happy with the results.

Twice baked potatoes MUST have the fillings mashed with cream, sour cream, or milk (preferably whole milk). After that, just put in whatever you like. I generally put in shredded cheddar or parmesan cheese, plenty of REAL butter, and chives. Sometimes I put in sauteed mushrooms or cooked crumbled bacon, too. I imagine you could put in chopped onions, raw or sauteed as you like them.

This is one of those “no recipe” dishes…I just put in enough milk or cream or sour cream to make the potatoes the right consistency. Pretty much the same consistency as mashed potatoes. I put in enough cheese to taste the cheese, I’ve never measured the amount.

When I bake potatoes, I generally bake six at a time, and we eat three for that meal, and have another three for nuking or making TBPs or soup or whatever. If I nuke a potato for myself, I’ll generally cut it in half, skin it, coarsely chop it, and then grate some cheese over it before I put it in the microwave. Then I top it with sour cream and a bit of salt, and maybe some bacon bits. It’s a very comforting lunch.

9

We like ours with roasted garlic mixed in (along with the salt, pepper, butter and milk) and cheese melted on top. It’s easy to roast the garlic, since you’re using the oven anyway.

You get a head of garlic and cut the top off to expose all the cloves, then drizzle some olive oil over it and wrap it in foil (not tightly). Bake it until it’s a golden color and the inside of the cloves is soft and mushy. (Not sure of the time, maybe 45 minutes?) Then you can just squeeze it out of the peel and it’s ready to add to the potatoes. I usually add the leftover spoonful of olive oil from it too, since it soaks up the garlic flavor.

10

Good point. Oiling isn’t required. I’m just a peasant. I love eating the whole spud, skins included, which grosses out some folks.* The oiling just crisps 'em up a bit on the outside while reducing the leatheryness a bit.** It can gunk up the oven racks so by all means skip that if you want to.

  • Pointless anecdotes: my family always ate the whole spud so it seemed perfectly normal. But we had strangers butt in at restaurants, warning us about lethal spud skins. (Cece has done a column on this, btw.) The (relatively) recent fad for stuffed potatoe skins in fern restaurants cracks my family the hell up.

** They’re still edible with a little extra melted butter, a judicious drizzle of Tabasco, whatever. Just swipe a toothpick for discreet use later.