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

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

Mix bacon, mushroom, onion together in a bowl.

Advanced

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