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You are here: Home / Food & Recipes / Cooking / Thursday Recipe Exchange – Potatoes

Thursday Recipe Exchange – Potatoes

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From our Food Goodess, TaMara:

I’m ready for this week to be done. Time for some weekend. It is supposed to rain which may impact my cycling, but we need the rain, as several areas are on fire. So I won’t whine and will find other ways to enjoy the days off. I’m seeing The Avengers tomorrow and no big plans otherwise.

I may finish Wiley Cash’s book, A Land More Kind than Home. I’m about halfway through. I love this book and the only reason I didn’t finish it in one sitting is I want to savor every chapter. Thanks for the recommendation John Cole.

Nothing exciting on the cooking front this week, but I did go out to dinner earlier this week and had an Indian Bread Taco that was amazing. I doubt I could recreate it, but if anyone has a good recipe, I’d love it if you’d share it.

Glad to hear frequent recipe contributor, Joshua D. (aka:Yutsano) had successful surgery today. Maybe he’ll have time to cook some good stuff while he recuperates.

Okay, on to tonight’s ingredients: potatoes. I have three recipes for you, Grilled Sweet Peppers and Potatoes, Roasted Smashed Potatoes, and a fool-proof Baked Potato with Roasted Garlic Butter below. If none of those are what you’re looking for, I just checked and we have over 20 potato recipes, you’ll probably find at least one.

This method results in excellent baked potatoes that have a crisp, flavorful skin and tender, fluffy potato. Top with roasted garlic butter for a perfect side. If you’re wondering about the skewers, they transfer heat throughout, so they cook quicker and don’t seem to dry out. Always fluffy. Skewering works really well with sweet potatoes, too.

Baked Potatoes with Roasted Garlic Butter
4 large baking potatoes, scrubbed and driedolive oil
Salt
2 to 4 metal skewers

Spread
1 or 2 large head of garlic
olive oil
1 to 2 sprigs of rosemary, minced
4 to 8 tbsp of butter

Skewer each potato (depending on the size of the skewer you can sometimes get 2 on it, leaving room between potatoes). Rub oil liberally on potatoes and then coat with a light layer of salt. Bake at 450 degrees for 30-45 minutes, until tender when pierced with a fork.

Meanwhile, peel white paper skin from garlic and slice off 1/4 inch off the top. Coat well in olive oil, place in a small baking dish (I saw a great recommendation making several and using a 6-cup muffin tin). Cover with foil and bake at 450 degrees for 30 minutes, or until cloves are soft when pierced. (Of course you can use a garlic roaster if you have one)

Once garlic is cool enough to handle, squeeze cloves out of their skins. Using a fork, mash garlic, butter, pinch of salt and minced rosemary to smooth paste. Serve with potatoes.

What’s on your weekend menu? And if you have recipe requests, let me know. I’m thinking strawberries or ziti next week, I haven’t decided yet.

Reader Interactions

42Comments

  1. 1.

    Jeffro

    I dunno, I think in addition to the BJ Lexicon there ought to be a BJ Book O’ (online) Recipes…there’s certainly enough foodies here…

  3. 3.

    Yutsano

    Gonna be stuck on hospital food until at least Saturday. They’re having a tough time getting me upright and controlling the pain. We’ll see how things go tomorrow since I’ve migrated to Percocet over morphine.

    Sputzim are Peru’s greatest gift to the world. And yes they are actually poisonous. Smart folks those Inca.

  4. 4.

    Comrade Mary

    Hey, Yutsano! Nice to see you! Do they have you in a stryker bed or a regular hospital bed?

    My worst experience with hospital food was ordering tea for breakfast and being delivered a cup, some little milkettes and a wee metal teapot — full of weak black coffee. So sad.

  6. 6.

    Helen

    Throw on the barbecue wrapped in tin foil with lots of butter, salt and pepper. The potatoes of my childhood.

  7. 7.

    Litlebritdifrnt

    I have to admit that a meal without potatoes is a sorry meal for me. While I am happy to do some pasta dishes, and some stir fries, for me the epitome of a real meal includes at least two types of potatoes if not three. The salt encrusted baked potatoes that Tamara discusses here are served at the late night restaurant that DH and I go to after Football games, and they are wonderful. The other version they serve which I call a “Columbus County baked potato” are sliced open raw, and large slabs of sliced onion placed inside with copious amounts of butter, then wrapped in foil and baked on the grill. They are literally heaven on a plate.

  8. 8.

    Steeplejack

    @Yutsano, @Comrade Mary:

    My absolute worst experience with hospital food was being in the hospital for four days after having my jaws wired shut and constantly getting regular meals. Which I could not eat! I could not get it across to anybody that I needed liquid nourishment.

    I was chasing the morphine dragon, though, which sort of took the edge off. I don’t remember being really hungry, just nonplussed at mealtime with a “WTF am I supposed to do with this?!” feeling. Surreal.

  10. 10.

    Schlemizel

    @Yutsano:
    Hospital food is part of the effort to make you want out of the hospital as soon as possible! Hope this goes quickly and you are kicking butts & taking names soon

  11. 11.

    Yutsano

    @Comrade Mary: Well…they’ve left an item off of every meal I’ve ordered so far. Nothing big just sugar in the coffee and such. I’m making do.

  12. 12.

    Schlemizel

    I like to do this for guests – it seems nobody makes twice baked any more so for many this is exotic food!
    4 large russet potatoes, about a pound each
    1/2 c sour cream
    1/2 c milk
    2 Tbp butter, softened
    1 Tbp cream
    1 c grated provolone cheese
    1/4 c chopped fresh chives
    1 bulb roasted garlic, mashed
    Olive oil
    coarse salt

    Bake the potatoes @ 400°F for about an hour – until a fork goes in easily

    Allow the potatoes to cool enough to handle. Slice the top third lengthwise off the potato. Scoop out the insides leaving about 1/4 inch of potato on the skin.

    Place the scooped out potato, sour cream, milk, cream, and butter into a large bowl and mash with a potato masher. If you want a creamier filling, beat with an electric beater but do not over-beat as it can turn glue like. Add the cheese, chives and roasted garlic and mix in. Salt and pepper to taste.

    rub the skins with a little olive oil and sprinkle with coarse salt. potato mixture into the skins. Reserve some of the cheese and chive to sprinkle on top. Spoon filling into the potato shells. Sprinkle with extra toppings.

    Place potatoes on a roasting pan and bake at 350°F 15 to 20 minutes until heated through.

  14. 14.

    Steeplejack

    A tip for those who don’t have metal skewers:

    I have found that if you nuke the baked potatoes in the microwave for 5 minutes (one potato) or 10 minutes (two or more) before baking them you cut down the baking time to about 45 minutes (from an hour) and still get spuds that are cooked all the way through.

    Note: If you try to get too fancy with this method and increase the microwave time too much you get cooked potatoes with an extremely rubbery skin. Not good.

  20. 20.

    DougW

    Baked spuds in my family consists of foil to wrap, a very generous pat of butter per potato and a healthy pinch of oregano. Spread top of potato with butter, top with oregano, seal foil pouches and bake for one hour at 400 degrees F. Always yummy.

  23. 23.

    Schlemizel

    @jeffreyw:
    Yeah, TaMara’s post last week had a picture that got me thinking about them so I just made these. I sorta munged up typing the recipe, got interrupted by a cat and a wife bit its not that difficult & they are really hard to screw up.

    I do these with blue cheese(St. Agur – it super creamy) and green onions for the MIL as she loves blue. The old standby is cheddar and onion.

  25. 25.

    becca

    Stuffed sopapillas are a favorite here.

    I don’t care for flour tortillas, so I sub the fry bread puffs. We eat the extras with powdered sugar as dessert.

  26. 26.

    Yutsano

    @MikeJ: I’m in the Orthopedic Institute room 409. It’s a really sweet room too. That’s across the street from the First Hill campus.

  28. 28.

    Comrade Mary

    @Yutsano:

    I’m in the Orthopedic Institute room 409. It’s a really sweet room too.

    Now we send out the Ninjas! BWAHHAHAHAHA!

  32. 32.

    Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason

    @Litlebritdifrnt: My favorite version of a multi-potato meal is shepherd’s pie. Hash with diced, fried potatoes covered with mashed potatoes and baked. It’s the only Thanksgiving leftover dish my kids want me to cook any more.

  33. 33.

    Yutsano

    @Comrade Mary: Good point. He is awful darn cute though. That could be his sekrit ninja power!
    @thalarctos: if you feel like coming over. I’m not all that the best of company right now however. :)

  34. 34.

    jnfr

    If we made a recipe book and put it up for sale we might raise some cash for the Pet Orphanage. Just sayin’…

  36. 36.

    thalarctos

    @Yutsano:

    if you feel like coming over. I’m not all that the best of company right now however. :)

    Understood. You’re not expected to have to be entertaining; you’re recovering. That’s other people’s job right now.

    The only question is, are guests–who you don’t have to be the best of company for–a welcome distraction, or another load to deal with?

    That would be my criterion for coming to visit–would you enjoy the company, or is it early enough in your recovery that it feels kind of like a chore at the moment?

    Either answer is fine, as it’s about what you would like right now.

  38. 38.

    andy

    Once of my favorite things to do with potatoes is to boil fingerlings or those little red potatoes for about five minutes, then dry them, toss them in a little oil, salt, and pepper, then roast them in a preheated cast iron pan in a 450º oven for 30 minutes or until they are fork tender. Once out toss them in a vinaigrette of your choosing (genrally mustard-y). Nice and simple and it leaves the skins crispy but with buttery tender interiors. Kind of like this.

  39. 39.

    gravie

    Yummy. Potatoes are among my favorite foods. And garlic, too. Also, I finished A Land More Kind than Home almost in a single sitting because I just couldn’t put it down. What a wonderful book.

  40. 40.

    tybee

    to skin a garlic clove, cut off the base end, put in microwave for 15 seconds or so. squeeze and the clove pops right out.

  41. 41.

    presquevu

    One of the best potato recipes I have made came out of some international grilling cookbook, will hunt up the paper copy, time permitting. It was from hill people in Nepal, and consisted of boiling new potatoes, then marinating (hot) in curry powder and onion, and grilling. They were good enough to wonder why bother with meat on the grill.

    Hash browns on the panini press are a thing of beauty. Squeezing as dry as possible in a tea towel was one cook’s secret when I researched technique.

    I would dearly love to know how the Big River Grill in Cedar Hill makes their German fried potatoes. My best estimate involves pan frying sliced leftover baked spuds, and dressing generously with olive oil, garlic, salt & pepper.

    Potato filled samosas or pakoras with mint or coriander chutney are tops as well.

    For oven fries, olive oil and Everglades Seasoning is hard to beat.

  42. 42.

    RedMolly

    Constant lurker, never a poster (everyone is just so intimidatingly clever!), but stepping momentarily out of the shadows to post my recipe for Zombie Shuffle Bacon Baked Potato Soup (so named because you can put it together even if you’re dead on your feet and zombie-shuffling). We regularly triple the recipe to feed six people.

    Zombie Shuffle Bacon Baked Potato Soup (Even Better when Colcannonized)

    3 medium russet potatoes, scrubbed, ends cut off and baked (or microwaved… you won’t be eating the peels, so it doesn’t really matter)
    4 thick slices good bacon, diced
    1 large onion, chopped
    2 ribs celery, chopped
    (Optional but good: 1/2 head green cabbage, shredded, for the Colcannonized version)
    3 cloves garlic, minced
    2 Tbsp flour
    3 cups chicken broth
    1/2 to 1 tsp hot sauce
    1/2 to 1 cup sour cream
    Salt & pepper
    Grated Cheddar cheese and chopped flat-leaf parsley for garnish

    Put bacon in a soup pot; set over medium heat and cook, stirring occasionally, until fat is rendered and bacon is deliciously crispy. Remove with a slotted spoon and set aside to drain on paper towels. Pour off all but 2 Tbsp fat.

    Add onions and celery (and cabbage, if using) to pot; cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until nice and tender, about 7 minutes. While they’re cooking, peel and cube the baked potatoes. (Don’t worry about making the pieces overly small; they’ll be falling apart completely in the next step anyway.) When onion is translucent, add garlic; cook and stir 1 minute more. Whisk in flour; cook and stir a couple minutes more, until flour loses its raw smell/flavor.

    Whisk in broth, a little at a time; when it’s all incorporated, add hot sauce and half of reserved bacon and bring just to a boil. Reduce heat and add potatoes. Grab a potato masher and mash the heck out of the potatoes in the still-simmering soup. When soup is relatively smooth, whisk in sour cream. Heat through but do not boil.

    Taste soup and add salt and pepper as you see fit. Serve lovingly lavished with reserved bacon, grated cheese and chopped parsley.

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