Twice-Baked Potatoes
Beef Wellington is on the Christmas menu, and this special entrée deserves a worthy side dish. These fabulous twice-baked potatoes more than fill the bill.
If you follow my little blog, you are probably aware that I am a recipe-aholic. It’s my passion to collect and try recipes, and it’s an addictive passion worthy of a 12-step program! In my efforts to find the very best, Rolls Royce type of recipe for any particular food or dessert, I will fill a Word doc with multiple recipes for that item.
To give you an example, I have 85 pages of gingerbread cookie recipes in one Word doc. I’ve made several, but I haven’t found the one yet, so I’ll keep trying. For another example of my addiction, on an average day, I copy and paste anywhere from 5 to 10 new recipes to try. In order to keep track of them, I have an Excel spreadsheet with the names of the recipes and where I’ve filed them. I have just over 5,000 recipes listed on the spreadsheet. Of course, I’ll never live long enough to try all of them. My motto is she who dies with the most recipes wins! 🙂
I’ve told you all this so that you will understand just how delicious these twice-baked potatoes are. Once I made them, I never looked back as I had found my gold standard.
The secret to these frantastic potatoes is a whole head of roasted garlic. Add butter, heavy cream, and Parmesan cheese along with some simple seasonings, and what’s not to like?
Don’t worry about making the 12 servings as it is nearly impossible to limit yourself to one serving. You have been warned!
Twice-Baked Potatoes
Makes 12 servings
Ingredients
- 1 large whole head garlic
- 1 tsp. or more olive oil
- 10 small baking potatoes
- 1 tbl. chopped fresh parsley
- 1/2 tsp. salt
- 1/4 tsp. pepper
- 1/4 cup plus 2 tbl. grated Parmesan cheese
- 4 tbl. butter
- 1/2 cup heavy or whipping cream
Directions
Preheat oven to 450o F. Remove any loose papery skin from head of garlic, leaving head intact. Cut top from head, just to tip of cloves (do not cut into cloves). Place head on sheet of heavy-duty foil; drizzle with olive oil. Loosely wrap foil around garlic, being careful that seam is folded to seal in oil.
Place potatoes and wrapped garlic on large cookie sheet with raised sides. Bake 45 minutes or until potatoes and garlic are fork tender. Remove to wire rack; cool slightly.
Open garlic package carefully and discard foil. Separate cloves from head and scrape or squeeze out pulp from each clove into a large mixing bowl. Slice each potato lengthwise in half. With spoon, carefully scoop out potatoes, placing flesh in bowl with garlic and leaving potato-skin shells intact. Place the 12 prettiest potato shells on large cookie sheet. If you like, refrigerate remaining 8 shells for use another day.
With mixer at low speed, beat garlic and potatoes with parsley, salt, pepper and ¼ cup Parmesan and butter until garlic and potatoes are broken up. Add cream and beat until almost smooth, about 30 seconds (do not overbeat; potato mixture will become gummy).
Spoon mixture into potato shells on cookie sheet; sprinkle with remaining 2 tbl. Parmesan.
You can cover and refrigerate potatoes up to 1 day.
To complete, preheat oven to 350o F. Remove cover from potatoes. Bake potatoes on cookie sheet with raised sides until hot on the inside and golden on top, about 30 minutes. Makes 12.
Source: A recipe I cut out of Good Housekeeping many years ago