Baked Potato Pizza

Now that my after work life is beginning to slow down and I'm not living between two houses (the move is almost done!) I have time again to make a dinner menu for the week.  It was perfect timing because my Food Network Magazine arrived that day and it was full of new recipes that I want to try.  I'll be writing about those in the next few days.

One of my all-time favorite things about the magazine is the tear-out booklet in each issues.  Each month it focuses on one ingredient, eggs, spaghetti sauce, baked potatoes or Christmas cookies, and it provides 50 recipes for that one ingredient.  Some are pretty basic, some pretty outrageous and some just perfect for me to try.  Let's be serious, that means they don't scare me.

This month the booklet focuses on Baked Potatoes and it provides 50 different ways to stuff a potato.  I chose to make a Pizza Baked Potato.

The first step is always the same - bake your potato in the oven until cooked, about 60 min at 400 degrees.  I used two pretty big potatoes and we had to add 10 minutes to the cook time.  I learned that the internal temperature should be 210 degrees if you have a nice thermometer.

Once the potato is cooked, let it cool for a few minutes until you can handle it.  Slice it open and scoop out all of the insides and place in a bowl.  Mix the potato with tomato sauce.  No real measurement here, add to taste, but you want the potato to be red.  I didn't have tomato sauce because it was used in something else being cooked in the kitchen (Stephen's delicious chili - so much cooking at one time!) so I used regular marinara sauce and didn't taste a difference.

Stir in 2 tsp of dried oregano.

Spoon the mixture back into the potato skins.  Top with Mozzarella and Parmesan Cheese and sliced Pepperoni.  You could also add any of your other favorite pizza toppings at this point.  Put the Pizza Potatoes back in the oven under the broiler until the cheese melts and begins to brown, like the top of a pizza.

Enjoy!  Our large potatoes were enough for each of us to have a half a potato at dinner and another at lunch the next day.  Because the Pizza Potatoes worked so well I'll be buying potatoes all the time now and topping with new things or left over ingredients in the fridge.

I also learned a new trick to make the skins crisp and delicious.  Before you bake the potato, clean the skin of course and then rub down with some EVOO and then roll in corse salt.  Then stab with the fork before placing in the oven.  The skins of our Pizza Potatoes was one of my favorite parts.

I'm not sure why I didn't take pictures... I'm sorry.  But trust me, it's delicious!