Tremendous Twice-Baked Potatoes
Prep
20m
Cook
90m
Total
110m
Bigly says
Folks. Twice-baked potatoes. TWICE. BAKED. The name tells you everything you need to know — we are baking these potatoes TWO TIMES. Once is not enough. Once was never enough. The single-bake potato is a tragedy, a missed opportunity, a wasted oven. The other sites — the ones with the pop-up that says 'subscribe to our newsletter for 73 more potato recipes,' as if anyone subscribes to a potato newsletter, who is subscribing, NOBODY is subscribing, it's all bots — they bake the potato once and call it a day. WEAK. Weak energy. Weak commitment.
We go further at BiglyEats. We bake the potato, we scoop the GUTS out of it — the most beautiful word in cooking, 'guts,' the fluffy interior, the soul of the potato — and we mix those guts with butter and sour cream and cheese and bacon and chives and we LOAD them back into the potato skin and we bake it AGAIN. A second bake. A glorious second bake. The skin gets crispy. The top gets golden. The inside is creamy and rich and the bacon is sizzling and the cheese is melted and people who eat this RUN out of words. They just point. They point at the potato and they make a happy sound. I've seen it a hundred times. A thousand times. More.
Many people don't know this, but the twice-baked potato is the perfect side dish for ANYTHING. Steak? Yes. Chicken? Yes. Another potato? Sure, why not, we're going crazy tonight, it's a potato party, double potatoes, no rules — and you can make them AHEAD, you can stuff them in the morning and bake them again at dinner, which is a real restaurant-kitchen trick that cookbook authors gatekeep for some reason, I will never understand it, I'm a hairpiece of the people. Believe me.
Ingredients
- 4large russet potatoes(russets only — they have the dry fluffy flesh you need)
- 2 tbspextra-virgin olive oil
- 1 tbspkosher salt (for the skins)
- 4 tbspunsalted butter, softened
- 1/2 cupsour cream(full-fat, the low-fat is a betrayal of the form)
- 1/4 cupwhole milk, warm
- 1.5 cups, dividedsharp cheddar cheese, grated
- 6 stripsthick-cut bacon, cooked and crumbled
- 4scallions, thinly sliced
- 2 tbspfresh chives, snipped
- 1/2 tspgarlic powder
- 1 tspkosher salt
- 1/2 tspblack pepper
- as neededsour cream and extra chives (for serving)
Steps
- 1
Preheat oven to 425°F.
- 2
Scrub the potatoes clean and dry thoroughly. Pierce each potato 4-5 times with a fork.
- 3
Rub each potato with olive oil and sprinkle generously with the 1 tbsp kosher salt. Place directly on the oven rack with a sheet pan on the rack below to catch drips.
- 4
Bake 60 minutes, until the skins are crisp and a knife slides easily into the center. Let cool 15 minutes — handle while still warm but not scalding.
- 5
Reduce oven to 400°F.
- 6
Slice each potato lengthwise. Scoop the flesh into a large bowl, leaving a 1/4-inch shell intact. Place the empty shells on a sheet pan.
- 7
Mash the scooped potato flesh with the softened butter, sour cream, warm milk, 1 cup of the cheddar, the garlic powder, salt, and pepper until smooth but still a little textured.
- 8
Fold in three-quarters of the bacon, the scallions, and the chives.
- 9
Spoon (or pipe) the filling back into the potato shells, mounding it generously. Top with the remaining cheddar and bacon.
- 10
Return to the oven and bake 20-25 minutes, until the tops are golden brown and the cheese is fully melted and bubbling.
- 11
Garnish with extra chives and a dollop of sour cream. Serve hot.
One more thing
So. The twice-baked potato is the kind of side dish that makes the steak nervous. The steak comes out of the kitchen, sees the twice-baked potato, and says 'wait, am I even the main course right now?' And the answer, often, is no. The answer is the potato. The potato has won. The potato always wins eventually, and on this night, with these twice-baked tremendous golden bacon-loaded potatoes, the potato has won DECISIVELY. End of discussion. Tell your friends.
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