Double-Fried Loaded Potato Skins
perfecting double fried potato skins. everyone invited!!!
My word for it was perfecting, and the thing I was perfecting is the second fry. Almost every potato skin you have eaten was baked, filled and baked again, and it was soft. These are fried, filled, and finished under heat.
The sequence is bake, scoop, fry, fill, melt. Four steps instead of two, and the result is a skin that holds its shape when you pick it up and makes a noise.
Do a whole tray. Potato skins are not a thing anybody eats two of.
- Makes
- 24 skins
- Hands-on
- 45 minutes
- Fried
- Twice
- Scoop
- Leave 1/4 inch
What you need
The skins
- 12 medium russet potatoes
- Oil and coarse salt, for the outsides
- 2 quarts neutral oil, for frying
The filling
- 1 lb bacon, cooked crisp and chopped
- 4 cups sharp cheddar, grated off the block
- Coarse black pepper
On top
- 6 spring onions, chopped
- Sour cream
- Smoked paprika
How it goes
1 — Bake them whole on the bare rack, an hour
Oiled, salted, pricked, at 425°F. No foil — the skin has to dry out, and foil steams it.
2 — Cool them properly before you cut them
Twenty minutes at least. A hot potato tears when you scoop it; a cooled one releases cleanly.
3 — Scoop, but leave a quarter inch against the skin
A spoon round the inside, leaving a visible layer of potato behind. Scraped bare, the skin collapses in the oil; too thick and it never crisps.
pro tip — Keep the scooped-out potato. That is tomorrow's mash, or the inside of twice-baked potatoes.
4 — First fry at 325°F, four minutes
Skins in batches, skin side down first. They come out pale and stiffened. Drained on a rack.
5 — Second fry at 375°F, two minutes
Hot and fast until they are deep gold and curl at the edges. This is the fry that makes the noise. Salted immediately out of the oil.
6 — Bacon in, cheese over, pressed flat
Chopped bacon into each skin, then cheddar over the top and pressed down with the back of a spoon so it lies flat rather than mounded. That flat melt is what the tray looks like in the picture.
7 — Broiler, three minutes, watching
Top shelf until the cheese has melted and browned in spots. Potato skins go from done to black fast at this stage.
8 — Spring onion over the whole tray at once
Not per skin. A heavy scatter across the entire pan while everything is hot, so it sticks. Sour cream and paprika on the side.
Everyone invited. Make twice as many as you planned. LFG.