Baked Potatoes

For my fourth blog I decided to venture out and try to make one of my favorite side dishes, a baked potato. My recipe book had a great recipe for baked potatoes paired with a yogurt and sour cream mixture.

The ingredients include:

• 4 large potatoes
• ½ cup Greek yogurt
• ½ cup sour cream
• 2 Tbsp. chopped fresh chives
• ½ tsp. salt
• ¼ tsp. pepper

The first step is to preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

The second step is to “Wash the potatoes and place them directly on the oven baking rack. Bake for 45 to 60 minutes, until very tender when pierced with a skewer” (Garten, 166).  I did exactly what Garten had said to do, I baked the potatoes first for 45 minutes then checked them to see if they were cooked, they weren’t fully baked so I baked them for 10 minutes more then checked them again by piercing the potatoes, they were finally fully baked and tender so I pulled them out.

Then combine the yogurt, sour cream, chives, salt, and pepper to make the chives dressing (Garten, 166). In the recipe it didn’t specify exactly how they wanted you to combine all the ingredients, so what I did was I put all the ingredients into a bowl and mixed everything with a spoon until all of it was thoroughly combined.

When the potatoes are done, cut them down the middle, and squeeze the ends. Then sprinkle them with some salt and pepper and then serve the hot potatoes with the cold chive and sour cream mixture.

The baked potatoes turned out great, and the chives dressing was really good as well, it tasted delicious with the baked potatoes.

What’s your favorite potato dish; mashed potatoes, French fires, hash browns, potato salad, etc.?

Garten, Ina. Barefoot Contessa Back to the Basics. New York, Clarkson Potter, 2008. Print.