Potato Skins Recipe

Looking for a tasty snack or just something to feast? Let’s widen the menu without stretching the budget with tasty potato skins!

We may have not recognized it so, but we’ve been extremely lucky to live through times that has been so luxurious as in the past couple of decades. At least when it comes to resources, energy and of course food.

We have everything at arms reach that a human body needs not only to survive, but flourish. We don’t have to run from sharp teethed beasts nor fast ones through the winter, hoping to find a forgotten piece of nut in the semi-darkness of the stock room.

We live through the times of plenty where we don’t have to think twice about throwing something away, switching something off or not eating what we don’t like. Few of us waste longing thoughts at garnishes that have been carried away by the waiters to be mercilessly thrown out like Xmas wrappers, once they fulfilled their role in the farce.

We should though. Not just because our throwing away culture causes damage to our environment or contaminates our own food with microplastics but because “In the House of the wise are stores of choice food and oil, but a foolish man devours all he has…” – 21:20

Countless dish was invented over the years, only to save every last bit of the available food, became the main deal. Just think about fish chowder that uses the everything that can’t be cut off the fishbone or fajitas that was about nothing else but using up meat that wasn’t the prime cut.

Counterintuitively though when people start to use their creativity to make something out of almost nothing, things tend to take a U-turn. With added value the worthless can become more appreciated than the main product it was cast away from.

Using some spices and herbs can take leftovers from obscurity to stardom as quickly as oversized hoodies spread around the globe once seen on Ariana Grande or like bacon and cheese was first put on the fried peel of potatoes.

Potato skins are far cry from what they were invented for in the first place. As many of us know now, potato skins are just halved and hollowed out baked potatoes that are filled with various ingredients (mostly cheese and bacon) then roasted ready.

Originally though, the dish was invented to use up the edible skins of the potato that otherwise had gone to waste. The skins were deep fried then topped with bacon, cheddar cheese and scallion.

Once people got wind of another way to enjoy saturated fat-soaked carbs, other restaurants made their own version of it, that drove potato demand through the roof. So it came, that chefs started to order potatoes to make potato skins and not the other way around.

Sure, where is a demand there is a supply and food factories soon started to make frozen hollowed out potatoes ready to be filled with anything that the chefs have dreamed up.

Nowadays potato skins aren’t reserved to the hospitality industry or a few savvy housewives, anymore.

They rose from the obscure alleyways of our unfrequently visited restaurants, (the ones we don’t always feel worth time investing in to visit) to not just something who we occasionally encounter but someone who we are ready to trust our soul to.

Or in another words, it became into something we are always ready to fill bacon and cheese into.

Ingredients

Beginner

1 lb / 450g Potato peel (about two handful)

Advanced potato

5 pieces / 800g Potatoes

Filling

½ cup / 100g Bacon, Guanciale or similar
½ cup / 100g Onion (diced)
1 cup / 100g Mushroom (sliced)
½ cup / 50g Cheese (grated)
1 tablespoon / 5g Chives or scallion (finely cut)

How to make Potato skins

Potato skins filling

Beginner

1. Mix bacon, mushroom, onion together in a bowl.

Advanced

1. Heat skillet to medium-low and render the fat out from the bacon, guanciale or any other preferably a bit fatty meat.
2. Increase heat to medium-high, add diced onion and stir-fry until glassy / translucent look, about 5 minutes.
3. Add sliced mushroom and stir-fry until browned.

Potato skins

Beginner

Wash the potatoes. Pretend, potato peeler hasn’t been invented. Use a knife to peel potatoes. Of course, we can use peeler made potato skins or pretend that the potato is made entirely of skin.
Deep fry the potato skins on medium-high until they start to turn golden brown, about 10 minutes. We can bake them in the oven too but that takes ages.
Divide the fried potato skins by a handful. Pick a filling and prepare it. Divide potato skins filling among the heaps of potato skins.
Sprinkle cheese and scallion on top. Place it on the middle rack of a 390°F / 200°C oven until the cheese melts, about 10 minutes.

Enjoy!

Advanced

Wash the potatoes. Bake (60 min at 400°F / 200°C), Cook (30 min) or microwave (highest setting 8min) whole potatoes until soft in the inside. If a knife doesn’t encounter much resistance, the potato is ready.
Cut potatoes in half.
Scoop out the middle, leaving a ¼” / 0.5 cm skin around the edge.
Pick a filling, prepare it then fill the potato skins up.
Sprinkle cheese and scallion on top. Place it on the middle rack of a 390°F / 200°C oven until the cheese melts, about 10 minutes.

Enjoy!

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