If you prefer to eat your potatoes sans peel, we totally get it. Sometimes the peels just get in the way of all that garlicky-mashed, rosemary-smashed, oven-roasted goodness. However, you’re doing potatoes a disservice if you’re throwing your potato peels away. Potato skins are a raved-about appetizer for a reason, people.
Instead of tossing those skins in the garbage, preheat your oven to 400ºF and wash those skins really well, as Extra Crispy recommends. Then, splash a bit of oil and a dash of salt onto those bad boys and roast them until they’re crisped to perfection.
Prepare a bowl of sour cream, guacamole, or even a bit of queso, and hot diggity dog — you’ve got yourself a wondrous snicky-snack.
And perhaps the best part of this whole reduce, reuse, recycle recipe is that potato skins are actually pretty good for us. Extra Crispy writes that potatoes and their skin are each packed with protein, vitamin C, and iron. Sure, the sour cream might cancel out the health benefits in a way — but let us believe we’re doing ourselves a favor.
So, even though this lady from a kitchen gadget informercial looks really sad peeling those potatoes in black and white —
— she’s actually thinking, “Wow, I’m about to go ham on these potato skins.”
Potato skins can be prepared several different ways. As mentioned, they can literally be just the skins, beautifully crisped. Or, you can leave some of the potato flesh and create loaded potato masterpieces like this:
Not afraid to show some skins. #PotatoSkins 📸: paoeats__ pic.twitter.com/oZNRSc5oQH
— FlanigansFL (@FlanigansFL) December 27, 2018
Some cheese, spinach + potato croquettes (I had leftover filling from potato skins loaded with spinach + feta, so added cheddar, eggs + GF breadcrumbs and fried them up). Potato skins here... pic.twitter.com/2wSVK2iBQR
— Dr Gill Loomes-Quinn (@GillLoomesQuinn) December 27, 2018
And this:
Sweet potatoes can also be turned into some delicious crispy skins.
Need some more inspiration? Here are a couple of recipe ideas to help you brainstorm what to load into your potato skins. You can start simple:
And then go a bit crazy:
No matter what you dip into or load up your potato skins up with, they’re going to taste bomb. Keep those potato peels handy — you definitely won’t regret it.
