By Michael Hastings
Media General News Service

A baked potato is a pretty good thing on its own with just salt, pepper, butter or sour cream.

About the only way to make a baked potato better is to stuff it and bake it again.

Stuffed potatoes, also known as twice-baked potatoes, use the neutral flavor of a potato as a platform for all kinds of additions that are full of meat, vegetables and especially cheese.

Classic cheesy stuffed potatoes, made creamy and slightly tangy with sour cream, show just how good stuffed potatoes can be. But that’s just the beginning of stuffing ideas.

When making stuffed potatoes, it helps to start with the right potato. Russets, or Idaho potatoes — the large, dark, oblong potatoes in stores — make the best baked potatoes. That’s because they are high in starch.

When potatoes cook, the starch granules absorb water and swell. Potatoes high in starch have larger starch granules, so when they cook, the granules swell to a larger size, breaking apart and becoming dry and fluffy. When the starch granules break apart, they become good at absorbing butter and other ingredients. In short, the potatoes become ideal for stuffing.

Because you want the potatoes fairly dry to absorb stuffing ingredients and flavors, it helps to prick them a couple of times with a fork before baking. That allows excess moisture in the form of steam to escape during baking.

Don’t wrap the potatoes in foil. Foil traps moisture. Potatoes wrapped in foil steam rather than bake, and they will not become dry enough or suitably fluffy.

Rubbing the potatoes with butter or oil promotes crispness, but it’s optional, depending on personal preference. For extra crispness, place scooped-out shells in the oven for a few minutes while preparing the filling.

Potatoes can handle, and actually beg for, generous seasoning. Don’t be stingy with the salt and pepper, and taste the filling before stuffing the potatoes.

Once potatoes are baked, you have two choices: Cut them in half lengthwise or leave them whole but cut out a V shape from the top — about the size of a large pickle spear. Which one you choose might depend on how large a serving you want. Half of a stuffed potato is usually plenty for a side dish or even a light main dish. Though you can always serve two halves to each person, you might want to serve whole potatoes when making main dishes for hearty appetites.

Dairy ingredients enhance the potato flavor and give spuds a creamy texture. So when inventing a filling, consider a dairy base. That doesn’t have to be fattening butter, though. Low-fat sour cream is arguably just as good as butter, and it also adds a pleasant tang that cuts through the starchy potato flavor.
Other choices include cream, half-and-half, low-fat buttermilk, softened cream cheese or plain yogurt. And let’s not forget about cheese.

Of course, a stuffed potato doesn’t have to have a dairy ingredient. Choose a handful of favorite vegetables or leftover chopped meat.

Holly Stowe, a local reader, likes her potatoes with shredded chicken, datil pepper sauce, caramelized onions and cheddar cheese.

Alicia Ross, who writes the Kitchen Scoop syndicated column that runs in the Winston-Salem Journal, suggests topping potatoes with hot-dog chili.

The potatoes also can be a good way to use up leftover taco meat, a pot roast and even pulled pork barbecue.

The possibilities are almost endless.

mhastings@wsjournal.com(336) 727-7394