Twice Baked Potatoes

The house was warm and cozy, and the wafting aroma of rending bacon fat, caramelized onions, and baked potatoes got every hound on the block howling. What was cooking? Twice baked potatoes! Comfort in a salty potato skin. Everyone LOVES these. Well, except for liars who pretend they are on some diet. Stop questioning yourself & make these tonight!!!

Preheat oven to 375°F.
Scrub russet potatoes rigorously under running water until clean. Drizzle with olive oil, freshly ground black pepper, and plenty of salt. Toss to coat.
Bake until fork tender, roughly 20-30 minutes. While those are baking, start caramelizing 1 whole diced white onion & begin rendering the bacon.
Heat pan on medium-high with butter, add onion and cook until translucent. Reduce heat to low and cook until slowly it becomes caramelized. When it looked like this (below), I was starving and wanted to speed things up.

Added a little squeeze of honey to the mix. Gives it that extra dimension of sweet and let’s you finish dinner sooner so you can watch 90 Day Fiancé.

Use half a pack of bacon (Oscar Mayer, I am an American) and place on cold pan. Turn on heat to low and slowly render fat until bacon is at desired texture. I like mine crispy so I went until this.

Time to check on the potatoes…

Perfect!

Let potatoes cool slightly until you can handle them.
Cut in 1/2 and scoop out pulp leaving some white. Mash pulp in large bowl.
Mash with butter, sour cream, crumbled bacon, sliced green onions, chives, cheddar cheese, a touch of milk, & generous amounts of salt & pepper. Potatoes eat up salt like the ocean so keep adding until it is perfect…..

You can interchange and add ingredients in this step as you please. For instance I didn’t have scallions (green onions) so I added extra chives & for fun, I added crème fraiche.

Try it and see what it needs. Mine still needed a little kick….solution? More salt (isn’t this always the solution) and… Cholula! I swear this is MAGIC.