Loaded baked potato skins

Hello, my first recipe that I am posting  are Loaded Baked potato skins! Super easy, delicious, fast to make and the best part is that you can make these ahead of time and warmed up in the oven right before serving! These can be made for dinner using larger potatoes or for a party using smaller or mini potatoes!

3-4 servings

ingredients:

•  5 medium-large potatoes of any kind  ( I personally like yellow the most)
• 4-5 slices of bacon( depends how much you like bacon!)
• 3 Tbls salted or unsalted butter ( whichever one you have on hand or preffer)
• 3-4 Tbsps of sour cream plus more for topping
• 3 scallions sliced
• 1 1/2 cups of shredded cheese. I use cheddar, Mexican and mozzarella. Use any on hand , don’t have to make a special trip to the store just for the cheese!)
• 2 Tbsp olive oil ( any other oils also work)
• salt and pepper for tasting

INSTRUCTIONS 

1.  preheat oven to 375
2. wash potatoes and pat dry
3. slice each potato the center long way
4. In a large bowl combine all the potato halves with the olive oil or any other kind of oil  you want to use and mix well to coat the potatoes well!
5. layout the potato halves evenly on a oven pan/ dish and lightly sprinkle salt and pepper over them.
6. bake potatoes for 1 hr to 1 hr 20 min.
7. while potatoes are baking slice the bacon pieces into 1/2 in wide pieces and cook in a pan over low-medium  heat. Give it a mix  a few times until you have bacon crumbs( not too dry though). set aside to cool
8. After 1 hour check by poking a few potato halves with a fork, if fork goes in easy and potato feels soft then they are ready, if not then bake until ready!
9. once potato halves have cooled down a bit, scoop out the inside of each potato half. You want them to be hallowed out in the middle to create a “boat”
10. In a large bowl add the scooped out insides of the potatoes, 3 Tbsps butter, 3-4 Tbsps sour cream( depends on the size of your potatoes), 1 1/4 cup of shredded cheese of your choice and  3/4 of the bacon .
11. mix all together and TASTE to see how much salt/ pepper to add. Mix should be perfect to your taste!
12. place the fillings back into the empty potato halves
13.  If you are making this recipe ahead of time then after placing the mixture back into the potato halves set aside to cool. Once cooled cover with foil and refrigerate up to 2 days.
14. once you want to serve the loaded potatoes preheat oven to 400 and bake for 12 minutes( if they were refrigerated bake for 20-25 minutes)
15. let potatoes cool down a few minutes and top with about 1 tsp of sour cream on each potato boat ( add more or less sour cream by preference! )
16. sprinkle the rest of the bacon, cheese and scallions evenly over all 10 potato boats!

ENJOY!!!!