Twice Baked Potatoes

 

I wasn't going to share this recipe BUT after posting a picture of these twice baked potatoes on my instagram earlier this week it was pretty much required ;)

I don't really have a set-in-stone recipe BUT here's the basic idea for making one of my favorite sides of all time. 

1) Wash your potatoes, poke a bunch of holes in them using a fork, rub some olive oil on them and place them on a baking sheet.  Sprinkle on some sea salt and then pop them in the oven until they're tender.  This was a 5-lb bag of regular ol' russet potatoes and I baked them at 400 degrees for about 50 minutes.  

2) When they're out of the oven, cut off the tops (don't cut them in half... just kind of slice the top part off) and then scoop out the insides of the potato and put them in a large bowl.  The potatoes are going to be stupid hot so be careful!!! But you do want to do this when they're warm.

3) Once you have them all hollowed out, mix in whatever it is you'd like.  I used some butter, sour cream, pink salt, pepper, and shredded jack cheese.  I used a potato masher and just mashed everything up and tasted the mixture until I liked it.  You could easily add in chopped bacon, green onions, etc.  

4) Put that mixture BACK into your potato boats, top with additional cheese and heat through.  If you're doing all of this at once they shouldn't take long to heat up, if you're prepping these in the morning, refrigerating and then baking later they'll take a little bit longer and you may want to cover them with foil so they don't burn.  I prepped mine in the morning and then pulled them out of the fridge later in the evening and didn't top them with cheese... I covered the pan with foil and baked them at 350 for close to an hour along with my meatloaf and then pulled out the pan, topped everything with cheese and popped them back in until the tops were melty.

HAPPY Thursday, friends!!!