Potatoes are an excellent side dish for both fish and meat dishes. What they just don't do with it - boil, fry, bake. In baked form, by the way, it preserves its valuable nutritional properties as much as possible, but if you bake potatoes in foil in the oven, they can be preserved almost completely - in this case, starch will not collapse, most vitamins and trace elements will also be preserved. How to prepare such a delicious dish?
It is necessary
- - young potatoes with thin skin,
- - vegetable oil,
- - salt, ground black pepper, additional seasonings to taste,
- - foil.
- For the sauce:
- 100 grams of sour cream or salad yogurt,
- 2-3 cloves of garlic
- 25 grams of spicy herbs,
- 2 small pickles or pickles.
- For filling for 8 medium potatoes:
- 150 grams of brisket, bacon, lard (your choice).
Instructions
Step 1
Preparing potatoes for baking
For baking in foil, it is best to choose thin-skinned young potatoes. Ideally, if all potatoes are about the same size - then you can not be afraid that individual tubers will not bake properly and will remain moist inside. Rinse the potatoes very thoroughly under running water using a sponge or brush. If the skin is thick, you can remove the top layer with a metal sponge. Examine the tubers carefully, cut off all damaged areas, remove the "eyes". Dry.
Step 2
Basic Baked Potato Recipe
Rub the prepared tubers with oil. It can be anything - sunflower or olive oil is often used for this (both refined and not), but you can take flaxseed, sesame, and cedar oil. The baked potato tastes quite neutral and aromatic oils usually enrich it well. In addition, a thin, even layer of oil will allow the potatoes to cook better on all sides. You can process the tubers either with your hands or with a silicone culinary brush.
Step 3
Sprinkle the tubers with salt and freshly ground black pepper. It is not necessary to limit yourself to just such a set of seasonings - you can add other spices and herbs to taste. Different types of aromatic peppers, turmeric, paprika, curry, garlic, savory, thyme, marjoram, rosemary, dill, parsley, basil and so on go well with potatoes. If fresh herbs are used, you can not rub the tubers with them, but wrap a sprig or two of greens along with the potatoes in foil.
Step 4
Use a fork to prick the tubers in several places, or make several fairly deep cuts on different sides. This point is often overlooked - and in the meantime, this is what will allow the potatoes to bake evenly.
Step 5
Wrap each potato tightly overlapped in a sheet of foil. It is better if the shiny side is facing inward - in this case, the heat will be less reflected from the metal surface. Thin foil, the sheet width of which is 8-9 microns, is best folded in two layers - this will avoid accidental breaks.
Step 6
Place the foil-wrapped potatoes on a wire rack or baking sheet. Do not fold them tightly - there should be gaps between the tubers that will allow hot air to circulate freely between them, allowing you to bake evenly from all sides.
Step 7
Bake in an oven preheated to a temperature of 200-220 degrees. If you are using a gas oven with bottom heat, turn the potatoes at intervals of 15-20 minutes. If you have an electric oven that heats evenly from both the top and bottom, there is no particular need for this procedure. Potatoes in foil reach readiness in about an hour, however, if the tubers are large in size, the baking time must be increased. You can check the readiness by removing and unrolling one potato and checking it for a puncture with a fork or toothpick.
Step 8
Potatoes baked in this way are good as a side dish for meat, fish or poultry dishes. It goes well with a variety of fresh vegetable salads, and it can also be used as a "solo", as a full-fledged second course. Large potatoes can be served directly in foil, having previously unfolded to the middle and folded back the foil. You can cut the potato in half or cut into slices, add a slice of butter on top and sprinkle with finely chopped herbs. Small tubers can be stripped of foil and served whole.
Step 9
Baked Potato Sauce Recipe
A good addition to baked potatoes served as a separate dish can be a sauce prepared with sour cream or unsweetened salad yogurt. To prepare it, squeeze 2-3 cloves of garlic into the base and add finely chopped fresh parsley, dill, basil or cilantro. You can use green onion feathers. Mix well, add a couple of finely chopped pickles or pickles. Cut deeply on the baked potato without making the cut to the end, slightly separate the halves and pour abundantly with the resulting sauce.
Step 10
Filled baked potatoes
Baked potatoes are delicious on their own, but baked with toppings can add extra flavor to the dish and add flavor to the potatoes. Thin slices of lard, bacon, smoked brisket and other fatty meat products are often used as the filling. Smoked meats can be supplemented with feta cheese and fresh herbs. You can also use chicken, duck or lamb fat to flavor potatoes - this will significantly increase the calorie content of the dish, but the taste and smell of the finished baked potato will be simply delightful.
Step 11
In this case, the tubers prepared for baking are cut along the center. The depth of the cut should be about 3/4 of the potato - the root crop should "open up", but not fall apart into two parts. After that, a slice of the product chosen for the filling is inserted into the incision. Now the halves of the tuber need to be squeezed and the stuffed potato wrapped in foil as tightly as possible and put on the wire rack with the cut up. After that, bake in the same way as in the basic recipe, but without turning it over - otherwise the melted fat will not saturate the pulp of the tuber, but will flow into the foil.
Step 12
Large potatoes are sometimes stuffed with an "accordion" - making not one longitudinal cut, but several transverse ones parallel to each other, and putting the filling into each of them. In this case, by the way, large tubers will also be baked a little faster.
