Loaded

I love potatoes. Aside from under cooking or whipping until they are glue, there are very few things that can be done to potatoes to make me not want to eat them. I saw these gorgeous, perfectly shaped russets at the store and immediately thought "loaded baked potato." These also would have made fantastic twice baked potatoes- but I wasn't feeling quite that motivated. Actually, I ended up cheating the cooking time a bit by microwaving the potatoes for about 6 minutes before putting them in the oven just because the afternoon got away from me and potatoes this size could easily take almost an hour to cook in a 350-375 oven. The microwaving works wonders and as long as they are finished in the oven- you can't really tell the difference. If you cook them all the way through in the microwave sometimes they can come out a little more mushy and translucent rather than fluffy and white. (Have you ever had a baked potato at Wendy's? Kind of like that!) One thing I always do though is prick them a bit to let some steam out, and I put some olive oil and a good sprinkling of kosher salt on them as well to add some flavor and I think it crisps up the skins a bit more.
To prepare the toppings, I chopped up some bacon and cooked it in a pan until crisp. Chopping it first makes it cook faster and you don't get any under cooked fatty pieces from shrinking strips that form those wave shapes that are hard to cook evenly (If I want bacon in strips I cook it in the oven, not a pan, but that's another post ;)). Then I just washed and chopped up some scallions. Some people may be a fan of chives, but I prefer the added texture of scallions. This time around I went with sour cream for the dairy, but I have been known to put both butter AND sour cream on if I'm feeling particularly unhealthy ;) A bit of additional salt (just table salt this time, not Kosher) and these taters were good to go! They were practically a meal on their own.