Ray's Potato Skins - ☺♥

Ray's Potato Skins

Yes, I could make all kinds of pleasant groans and grunts to make the point that this recipe is fantastic. I will dispense with the theatrics and get down to business. This is one recipe you want to make ... period! The quality and taste of these potato skins puts all the places I have ever eaten these things to shame ... bars and restaurants. Typically they cheat on the quality and amounts of essential ingredients. Okay, enough bragging. The key point is you can't have excellence without perfect ingredients, perfect procedures and a generous use of the perfect ingredients. Let's proceed with this recipe for two servings.

What is a perfect potato skin? We start with two jumbo russet potatoes baked at the pure convection oven setting of 420 degrees F for one hour. What comes out is a crisp skin perfectly baked potato. Cut it in half with a sharp knife, lengthwise, to create two shallow halves per potato, and use a spoon to scoop out roughly half of the soft interior from each piece. Use the scooped out soft potato for some other recipe. Then fry the halves/skins in peanut oil at 325 degrees F until they have a golden surface on the soft part of the potato interior. At this point they must be drained of any residual peanut oil on a paper towel, then loaded with the perfect ingredients, as described next.

Grate a high quality aged white cheddar cheese ... roughly 4 ounces for two potatoes. Fry four slices of dry cured thick sliced hickory smoked bacon only until it is just crisp ... not flexible fatty and not fried to death. Drain the hot fat from the bacon onto a paper towel. Let the bacon cool. Break it up into small pieces roughly 1/2" on a side. Get a cup of real sour cream ready for the final step.

Now, fill the potato halves with the grated cheese, distributed evenly. Then distribute the bacon pieces evenly over the surface of the cheese. Then put the potato halves on a cookie sheet and into a 250 degrees F oven for five minutes. Finally, put the potato halves on two serving plates and coat the tops with the cold/room temperature sour cream.

Serve the perfect potato skins hot with cold beer. Watch your guests faces as they start to eat these delightful creations. You will see surprise, excitement and hear expressions of pleasure. You will get fine compliments from everyone.

Does this sound like something you might want to do? Yes. Actually, if you taste them first your guests might go hungry. What are you waiting for? Get busy!

Now you have another great Food Nirvana recipe ... this being one of the rare ones presented in narrative form.

Have fun! Show your love to your close friends and family.

Enjoy life!