Crispy Potato Skins might be my Ultimate Potato Recipe

Hiya, it’s me, Poppy – your Potato Queen! Today I’m sharing a recipe that might actually be my favourite way to eat potatoes… crispy, golden potato skins. Honestly, they’re crunchy, flavour-packed, and just pure potato joy.

I’ll take you through the whole recipe step by step, with my tips for getting them perfectly crispy every single time. These are such a winner – whether you’re cooking for friends, a party snack, or just because you fancy treating yourself to the best potato dish ever (in my humble opinion!).

✨ In this video you’ll see:
How I make my ultimate potato skins 🥔
The secret to maximum crispiness 🔥
Why I think this might be the best way to eat potatoes 👑

If you love spuds as much as I do, you need this recipe in your life.

Get the full written recipe here: https://www.poppycooks.com/blog/crispy-potato-skins/

👉 Don’t forget to give it a LIKE, drop me a COMMENT with your favourite way to eat potatoes, and hit SUBSCRIBE for more potato fun from your Potato Queen!

#PotatoQueen #PoppyCooks #PotatoRecipes #PotatoSkins

Hello, I am Poppy Cooks and I am the queen of potatoes of of the internet and I want to show you how to make one of my favorite ways to eat potatoes. Not that all of them aren’t. I love all of them, but a potato skin filled with cheese and bacon and mushroom and sauces and whatever else you fancy. It’s one of the best appetizers you could get. Or would it be a starter in the UK? A starter. So to start off, get your potatoes into the oven to bake. For your potato skins, once your potatoes are baked, you’re going to then cut them in half. Now, it’s up to you which kind of half you go for. So, I know this sounds stupid. So you can do it like this where you’ll have like quite a deep boat of potato or you turn it kind of like on its side and then you can make it a bit of a thinner boat if that makes sense. Does you know what I mean? You’ve got like deep and not deep if you get me. Anyway, I’m going to go for a mix and match because that’s what I’ve cut up so far. So we’ll do that one as a deep boat. the things. I don’t know how I get to these points, but here we are. And a thin one. And then what we’re going to do is we’re actually going to scoop the middle out um and leave probably about a centimeter of kind of like potato flesh around the edge. What’s really good about potato skins is that you get to keep this lovely little bit of like baked potato. So really, really good for noky. Best way to do noi is to use baked potato mash. Um, and you can do as just your normal mash. Add a bit of cream, add a little bit of butter in there, put that on top of a pie, serve it up with a little bit of steak or whatever you want to serve your mash with. Um, or make a bit of So, I think I’m going to save this and make with it. It’s the best way to do it. Add a little bit of I’ve got a proper recipe, but off the top of my head, couple of eggs, 300 200 200 300 grams of um 00 flour or a little bit of plain flour if that’s all you’ve got. And then just mix it whilst the potato mash or innards the potato innards are still warm. That’s the best way to do it. So now I’ve scooped out all that potato ins. Um I’m going to get them onto a rack which can go into the oven and I’m just going to give them a little spray with oil. If you don’t have a spray oil, just use a little um bit of oil and just brush them slightly. And this is just going to help get that crispiness that we’re looking for from a potato skin before we add the fillings in. So little spray. If you want to be real naughty, the best way to do this part is just to deep fat fry them. Oh, it’s blooming delicious. But not everybody’s got deep fat fries. So, we’re going to do them into the oven at around 180° C just to get that little bit of color and crispiness. So for your filling of your lovely potato skins, you can have whatever you like, but the kind of I suppose the more classic sort of versions are for vegetarians, some little mushrooms. And then for the meat eaters around us, a little bit of bacon. So for your mushrooms, I’ve just got some closed cut mushrooms. Um, standard mushroom variant. I’m going to eat the stalk. It’s what I do. Waste not want. So, I’ve got some mushrooms. Now, they shrink to nearly nothing. So, you kind of need almost a whole pack of mushrooms, a whole punet of mushrooms. That’s about like 250 grams. I think we’ll try and get away with about 200 gram. So, I’m just taking all the stalks out. Personally, I don’t wash mushrooms. If they have got a bit of soil on, I just kind of You can brush it off with a little pastry brush or just pick it off yourself. Well, if you wash mushrooms, I mean, it’s completely up to you. It’s perfectly fine, too. But they do absorb water. Um, and you get this kind of more liquidy sort of moisture come out of the mushroom. Obviously, if they’re really soily, of course. Yeah. You will have to kind of We used to kind of get a a bit of um what’s it called? Jloth and dampen it and literally kind of wipe the mushrooms down. But [Music] see, there is a bit of soil on these. So, we’ll just kind of pick this off. With the stalks, if you’re like me, you can just eat them. I love a raw mushroom. So, you can eat them as you go along. A little bit of a chef’s treat. Um or you can keep them for your if you do, you know, like the big pots of stock when you have all your little leftovers, throw them into there. Great for a little bit of that umami flavor. um or straight into your compost really is the only way. I mean, if they’re small enough, you can absolutely leave them on. Um but these mushrooms seem to be quite big and because we’ve only got small potato skins. Uh if the mushrooms are a bit too big, it’s going to look a bit strange. That’s the only reason I’m kind of taking them off. If you’ve got baby baby mushrooms, you leave them on. They’ll be absolutely fine. So, with your mushrooms, we’re just going to slice through [Applause] standard slices really. Nothing crazy. [Applause] Around I don’t know half a centimeter thickness maybe thinner. I’m not really good with centimeters. I seem to know inches rather than centimeters but I don’t know how much that would be in terms of like I don’t know an eighth of an inch. Doesn’t have to be exact. Whenever you’re chopping anything, you want to kind of use a flat edge to chop on. So, this side is very flat, which means that it’s more secure and you’re going to be less likely for it to like roll around and cut yourself. So, that’s why I’m using this edge. Also, I really like the shape of the little mushroom cup when it comes to putting it inside that potato skin. You get this lovely shape to it. If you wanted to, you could use um a different type of mushroom. You could kind of go go for more of like an exotic wild mushroom. I absolutely love hen of the woods. One of the nicest or hen of the woods and there’s chicken of the woods, isn’t there? Which I feel like there are two. They are two different unless I just had one that was really good. I had a chicken of the woods and honestly it is it is actually like eating delicious chicken. I can’t even describe to you how good it is. Mushrooms revolutionary. Mushrooms literally will change the world. I think they’re delicious. So, you could use a wild mushroom into here. Um, and I would recommend maybe doing like a different cheese. So, we’re going to just use like um you know a mild cheddar um for that more traditional sort of uh potato skin. But with a wild mushroom, you could really get some proper flavorful cheese in there. A little bit of gouda, a little bit of comp, a little bit of blue cheese would be great as well. The possibilities are endless with the potato skin. The potato skin is basically a vessel for any kind of flavor that you want. I’m just kind of showing you the simple versions, the traditional ones, the things that we’re used to. But that’s what’s great about cooking. You can just let loose and go for it completely. [Applause] Could do a little chantrell. Oh. Oh, very posh. Um, these are going to go into the pan. So, I’ve got a pan on. It’s about a medium high heat. um with mushrooms because they have so much liquid in them, you want to extract that liquid out of them. Otherwise, they just kind of boil and they look sad and gray and gross and the texture is a bit like a slug and it’s that’s where I disagree with, you know, mushrooms. I want them like golden and crispy and well, not crispy, but golden and flavorful and delicious and a little bit less moist than they are naturally. So, we’ve got a nice high heat on here. turn it up a little bit. I just didn’t want it to, you know, go over hot, but I can feel the heat coming in. Now, with this recipe, I’m actually going to add a little bit of oil into the pan. But if you are cooking um mushrooms, maybe let’s say for, I don’t know, a different dish. It’s actually really good to get your mushrooms into a dry pan, salt, give them a little toss, and then get your oil or butter or fat or whatever it is that you’re cooking in them because that initial dry heat and the salt brings the moisture out straight away. Um, but I’m going to do a little bit of oil on this because I don’t want them to be completely cooked because we are going to put it back in the oven in a minute. So, a little bit of oil just to cover the base. And with mushrooms as well, you don’t want to overcrowd the pan because the more you overcrowd it, um, the more they’re going to stew in their moisture. So, about half at a time, bit of salt, and then like anything that you want to caramelize and get golden, just leave them for a minute. Really tempting to just keep tossing them. Just leave it. The temptation is overwhelming, but they already smell delicious. Okay, give it 10 more seconds. 10 9 8 7 6 5 one. Now I can give it a toss. You can see there’s already liquid coming out. They look like wet in some way. wet in the best way, but we also have a bit of caramelization. So, I’m going to leave them again to do their thing. Leave it alone. Eat some raw mushroom. Delicious. So tempting when there’s a pan on to just keep stirring it. You have to keep distracted. Keep your mind distracted like a Jedi. Like the Force. Do they keep their mind distracted? Don’t know. Love a mushroom. This is killing me and leave it again. I’m going to get a little plate to put them on. So when that batch is ready, we can go in with the next. So, we’ve got a bit of caramelization on all the mushrooms and then just leave them to chill over here for a bit whilst you do the rest of them. Same way again. Little bit of oil, nice and hot mushrooms in. For the bacon, I’ve just got some little smoked bacon lardons already cut up. If you want to do little crispy streaky bacon, go for it. But it’s just going to go into um the frying pan we just did the mushrooms in. And we’ll let that fry and get a little bit caramelized and the fat just soak out of it and be delicious. And then we can start building our delicious potato skins. So our potato skins have had about 15 minutes about 180°. So they’re a bit crispier now. Um which means that when we put the filling in, all we need to do is wait for that lovely cheese to melt rather than waiting for our potato skins to get crispy. They’ve got a little bit of goldenness on them and the skins themselves have got that crunch which we’re looking for. Um, I’ve gone like very chef today, although you’re not actually allowed to do that in the kitchen, so I don’t know why. Anyway, we’ve got our bacon bits. We’ve got some mushrooms. I’m going to do a little layer of cheese first cuz cheese is life. Um, then some mushrooms, then some bacon. And you can kind of mix and match how you want to. So, I’m going to do a bit of red leester, which is just grated, but get the block and grate it yourself. The grated stuff is good for some things, but not for this. It doesn’t melt as well. This has got a bit of a finer grate on it because we’ve used a box grater. Whereas, you know, when you get it in a bag and it’s already grated, it’s so thick and it’s coated in like a uh what’s it like an anti-caking agent, which means that it stays separate and it’s just I mean, it’s all right if you’re going to sprinkle it over a pizza because it’s going to cook at a higher temperature and there’s more of it, but we need it to melt fairly quickly on these. So, bit of red leester or you can use uh basically we’re looking for that kind of American cheese look. So, it’s always a little bit more orangey. So, that’s what we’re going for. And I’m also going to do a little bit of cheddar as well cuz I love the flavor of cheddar. So, but you could completely oh mix it up like you could do like three cheese, bit of comp, a little bit parmesan, a little bit of blue cheese if you fancied it. Do whatever you like. This is just the traditional traditional way I suppose or the most uh popular way. Anyway, talking rubbish. A little bit of bacon into a little bit. There was actually quite a lot. Fingers is going to be easier for this one. I’m going to do half and half. So, half bacon, half mushroom, and then some of our lovely mushrooms. kind of spread them out. You don’t want to really fill them. Um, and that’s why it’s quite nice uh you know how we cut them where you get the kind of like shallow boats and the deep boats. The shallow boats work quite well because then you can spread quite a lot of filling out whereas the deep ones you end up you because you don’t want to completely cover it with filling. You kind of still want gaps of potato coming through. None of that made sense. They didn’t actually come to a conclusion, but I think the conclusion of it is that the shallower boats are better. You know what I mean by boat? You know, like a the vessel shallower is better. Few little bits of mushroom. You could put a bit of both in if you fancied it. Um, and then I’m going to finish with a combination of cheddar and red leester because the more cheese the merrier. I think cheese is one of my Achilles heels. It’s my muse, my Achilles heel, my um addiction. I’m the kind of person that will go to the fridge at night and just eat a block of cheese. Not not the whole block, but like a crumble of cube. Um and Tom will always be like, “Baby, you coming up?” And I’m like, “Yep, good.” And he hears the fridge and he’s like, “Oh, you’re eating cheese again.” Yes, I am. I’m like a mouse. Where did the mice and cheese thing come from? That’s my question. Why is it mices, mouses, moosees that eat cheese? Can’t all animals eat a bit of cheese? Is it something that they just used to fall on the floor? I don’t know. Okay. Beautiful. Uh, this tray is hot. I was about to pick it up then. Uh, that goes back into the oven again, 180° for around 5 to 10 minutes. fridge. We’re looking for the cheese to melt um because everything’s cooked and ready to go. We’re just looking for it to be lovely and gooey and melty. [Music] So, if anyone here um kind of follows me from any other sort of platform or has read a book that I’ve written, you’ll probably know that I’m a little bit obsessed with TGI Fridays. like it’s my go-to on a birthday. I’ve been there nearly every year for my birthdays. I love the bubblegum daquiries. I love the potato skins. I love the uh now Friday’s wings, but the JD wings. Top tier flavor of chicken wing. I like the mozzarella dippers. I like the fajitas. I like the burgers. I like the ribs. I just love TJI Fridays. The cocky te’s to die for in a TJI Fridays. So, this is my homage to TJ Fridays because whenever you get the potato skins, you get served a uh sour cream and chive dip. They used to have on the table the American mustard and ketchup as well. Now, when I was little, I was always like, “Mustard, disgusting. I can’t eat that.” But my mom was like, “You need mustard, ketchup, and the sour cream all in one go.” And so this is like the best sauce, but it’s not premixed. You cannot premix this sauce. It doesn’t taste as right. It needs to have those kind of individual layers of saucing on your potato skin. So I’m just going to chop a little bit of chive into some sour cream. We’ll season it up ever so slightly. A bit of salt and pepper. And that’s our sour cream and chive dip. Very simple, really perfect for a potato skin. And then I’m literally just going to pour some mustard and some ketchup into bowls. But I needed you to know about the law of this combination. And the law is that my mom used to spend every day in TJ Fridays cuz in the on the Haggley Road in Birmingham and then come and just drink cocktails in there all day and then I would be there and I’d eat um uh chicken wings and and oh, we also knew the chef that worked there. She was very nice and she’d let me go into the kitchen and they used to do a kid’s ice cream and it was like uh ice cream with chocolate sauce and worms and you could like do it and then I’d sit there and I’m one of those weirdos that likes to stir it until it melts and then drink the ice cream. So yeah, that was my childhood for a very long time and so TGI’s was always such a big thing in my life. And if you know the one on the Haggley Road, way back when, it used to be one of the best places ever because it had a telephone box in there as well. So you could get in the telephone box and then you could run around the stairs and do circles and they gave you balloons and it was just like best childhood. Whilst my mom sat at the bar and got absolutely shitfaced. Um, she loved me for that one, but she did. It’s true. Best It was the best cocktail she had in Birmingham. That’s why. Uh we lived in Birmingham at the time as well. That’s bit of salt, bit of pepper. Little bit of sour cream and charred dip. And then we should be ready for our lovely delicious um what they called? Potato skins. These look gorgeous. Cheese has just melted. We’re not looking for like crispy like bubbly cheese. You just want it melted. So that’s what we’ve got here, which is perfect. And that little combination of the little red leester and the not mozzarella, cheddar on there is just chef’s kiss. So now this is obviously how we’re going to serve them, but I need to show you the sauce combination. This is what it is. It is imperative that you have it like this. Okay, I know I’m getting a bit extra with it, but I don’t care. So ketchup. I’m going to just take I’ll take this little one. Or should I get should I get a sexy shot first? So, these are delicious as they are, but like I said, you’ve got to get the little trio of sauce. So, a bit of ketchup. And you can you can mix up the levels a little bit if you want to. If you want it a bit more mustardy, feel free. Uh, we need a little bit of mustard as well. It seems like quite a lot of sauce for a small amount of potato, but just trust me, okay? Just trust me. Then you have to mix it with a knife because that’s all you have on your table when you have these. A little smudge around. Not fully incorporated, but just kind of like together. Honestly, I mean, it looks doesn’t look as nice as what it tastes like. It tastes delicious. And then cheers. One of the best starters, appetizers, or just all round little snack. You can get a bacony potato skin. That is it. That is absolutely Oh, I think the sauce makes it honestly just absolutely delicious. If you like my little saucy creation um and you want to see some more potato dishes, I got plenty more for you. Then please do like and subscribe. Do you kind of um hear me ramble on about potatoes and eat delicious food? Honestly, you need to get on this. But yeah, let me know what you think as well.