Baked Potatoes with Yogurt & Sour Cream

Now that I've begun to settle into my new job, I'm working on managing my free time, trying to work out a schedule that includes getting all the ingredients I need from different stores, and still having time to cook, even on weekdays. It's been a little tough this first week, so I picked some simple vegetable dishes that I could handle making after work and that wouldn't require any special ingredients that would merit a trip to anywhere other than the regular grocery store.  Because these dishes are pretty low maintenance, these upcoming posts might be a little shorter than normal, so I'll try to update more frequently to make up for it.

I started with something exceedingly simple: baked potatoes. I preheated the oven and washed the potatoes, placing them directly on the baking rack inside the oven:

Hot potatoes! 

In the meantime I got the rest of my ingredients together:

scallions, Greek yogurt, sour cream, salt, and pepper 

I combined the yogurt and sour cream together in a small bowl and added the chopped green ends of the green onions:

The recipe actually calls for chives, but I was using green onions in a different recipe later in the week, and didn't want to buy two different products that were basically the same thing.  

I stirred this whole mixture together and added salt and pepper:

 Thrilling, I know 

I placed this bowl in the fridge to keep cold while the potatoes finished baking. Now, I don't know what it is about potatoes these days, but these things took forever to cook. The recipe says to bake them at 350 for 45-60 minutes. I checked them after about 45 minutes, and they were nowhere near done. At 60 minutes? Still not cooked. Of course, the chicken we had made to eat with the potatoes was fully cooked by now and getting cold, so we started on that and left the potatoes in the oven.

Finally, after about an hour and 15 minutes, the potatoes were finally done (although Dan claims his was still a little undercooked).  We took the potatoes out of the oven, cut them down the middle, and squeezed both ends:

The squeeze wasn't quite as effective as I'd liked

I sprinkled the inside of the potato with salt and pepper:

See the tiny black specs? That's pepper

I took the sour cream-yogurt mixture from the fridge and added a dollop to the hot potato and here's the final presentation:

I probably could have added a little extra green onion to the top as a garnish, but I think I was so tired of waiting for the potatoes to cook that I forgot

I don't usually like sour cream on my baked potatoes (I'm more of a butter-girl) but this was really delicious. The cold chive dressing with the hot potato created a great balance. It was thicker than regular sour cream and the yogurt added some tang to the mix. The onion was really key, adding a little extra depth of flavor. Potatoes are also the one thing I like super salty, but I didn't feel the need to add any excess salt to this one. Even though I halved the recipe since it was just Dan and me, we still had a little extra dressing at first. It didn't last long. About half-way through our potatoes Dan and I both went back to finish off the rest of the dressing because it was that good. It really took a regular baked potato and escalated it to something special. 

Make this when:  you've had a hard day at work and are craving something carbo-loaded, creamy, satisfying, and just a little extra special. You get the max amount of satisfaction with a minimum amount of work. 

Next Course: Creamy Cheddar Grits