Recipe: Stuffed Jackets

This was a dinner we made a few weeks ago, at the request of my husband. He loves a stuffed jacket potato, we all do, but I rarely make them because they just seem needlessly labour-intensive when you can almost get the same effect from loading your potato up with toppings. Perhaps that's just me being lazy.  Probably. Anyway, he requested them so I duly obliged.

These jackets are creamy and delicious. You can eat them as a side to a main meal (we had them with hot and spicy chicken wings) or as a lighter meal on their own. Either is good.  

They're nearly identical to my usual loaded spuds but this recipe uses soured cream rather than double cream, which I think I prefer. 

Stuffed Jackets

Ingredients

4 medium baking potatoes
60g butter, cubed
230ml soured cream
115g cheddar cheese, grated
6 rashers of streaky bacon, cooked and crumbled
4 spring onions, finely sliced

Method

Preheat the oven to 200c/gas mark 6 and bake the potatoes for about an hour, until tender. Leave to cool for a few mins and reduce the heat of the oven to 180c/gas mark 4.

Cut each of the baked potatoes in half lengthways. Scoop out the potato and put into a large bowl. Put the potato skin shells to one side. Mash the potato with the butter before stirring in the soured cream, cheddar cheese, bacon bits and sliced spring onions.

Carefully spoon the mashed potato mix bake into the potato skin shells, pop onto a baking tray and bake in the oven for around 30 minutes until heated through and golden.