Baked Smashed Red Potatoes

Smashed Red Potatoes are our new favorite side!

A few weeks ago, Andy mentioned he was going to fix smashed red potatoes to go with dinner. In my mind, I saw what I'm posting here. In his, that meant he was stewing red potatoes with the skins left on and then smashing them with the potato masher. They were really good. (So here's a little insight into how my brain processes things.) They were really good but...that got me thinking about fixing Baked Smashed Red Potatoes in the very immediate future.

That weekend we decided to grill a steak, and bake an onion along with the remaining red potatoes. So you know where I am going with this. Let me veer off the path for just a minute and then I'll come back full circle.

I don't know about y'all, but the older I get the easier I want life to be. We recently visited my sister and brother-in-law in Alaska (post to come soon). Don fixed us breakfast just about every morning and he kept dipping into this massive zip bag of pre-cooked bacon. Andy and I were like, we need this at the river. I mean, when you can be outside living the dream instead of standing over a skillet frying bacon, why not? This is not a slight towards bacon by any means but a pound of bacon can eat into fun time. By the end of the week, I'm looking online for big bag options available close to home since we aren't members of the members-only club they are. Within two days, I had 72 vacuum sealed slices of precooked bacon ready to pop into the freezer after opening.

Let's jump back to the original story after that diversion. When preparing dinner that night, I thought, forget the baked potatoes, I'm going for it! The cabin ingredients don't mirror our home ingredients 100%. However, I am the queen of substitutions. So here is my recipe for Baked Smashed Red Potatoes.

INGREDIENTS:

• Small red potatoes with skins left on (recommend size of golf ball)
  
• Sharp Cheddar cheese, shredded or sliced off block, thinly
  
• Pre-cooked bacon, chopped
  
• Black Pepper and Garlic Salt, to taste.

DIRECTIONS:

1. Preheat oven to 425°
2. Boil potatoes whole until you can run a knife through them. Depending on size, 15-20 minutes.
3. Brush a baking sheet with olive oil. 
4. Using a potato masher (or a heavy-duty coffee mug in our case) firmly smash the top of the potato.
5. Brush smashed potatoes with additional olive oil.
6. Season with pepper and garlic salt.
   
7. Bake for 15 minutes.
8. Top with bacon and cheese and return to the oven until cheese is bubbly.
   

This potato was fairly large. It didn't smash as easily as the one pictured below. 

But I can assure you, it was just as delicious!

We say, "Get ready to hurt yourself" when we know we're getting ready to dig into something so good we can't quit.