You wouldn’t exactly call me a football fan. My football-related credentials can be boiled down to two things: at a certain point in college I really enjoyed avoiding writing papers by playing 10-Yard Fight, and at one point in my life, I listened to that embarrassingly homonymous band. I really have nothing bad to say about snacks, though, so I mostly just use the Superbowl as an excuse to make vegan potato skins.
They’re pretty self-explanatory, so I’ll get right to the recipe. Just remember: the gnarlier the skin on your potatoes, the better!
Potato Skins
Recipe type: Appetiser
Cuisine: American
Prep time:
Cook time:
Total time:
Serves: 10-12
Ingredients
- 5-6 medium-large russet potatoes
- 2 Tbsp oil
- ½ tsp paprika
- ¼ tsp garlic powder
- ¼ tsp salt
- ¼ tsp pepper
- 4 oz vegan cheddar cheese, grated
- 2 Tbsp vegan bacon bits
- vegan sour cream
- green onions, thinly sliced
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 400°F.
- Poke a whole slew of holes all over your potatoes with a fork, so they don’t explode.
- Toss potatoes in the oven and bake for 30 minutes, or until you can easily stab them with a fork.
- Remove from oven and slice potatoes in half lengthwise, being careful not to tear the skins.
- Raise oven temperature to 450°F.
- With a spoon, scoop out the centers of the potatoes, leaving about ¼” or less around the edges (depending on how potato-ey you like your potato skins to be). Take care not to perforate the skin while disemboweling your potatoes. If you have a grapefruit spoon at your disposal, this would be a great application for it.
- In a small bowl, stir together oil and spices.
- With a basting brush, coat the outer skins of the potatoes with oil mixture.
- In another bowl, toss vegan cheese with vegan bacon bits.
- Generously fill potato skins with cheese mixture and place on an ungreased baking sheet.
- Bake those suckers for 8-10 minutes, and then stick 'em in the broiler for another 30 seconds, or until cheese is melted and skins are as crispy as you want them.
- Top each one with a dollop of vegan sour cream and plenty of green onions and serve hot.
Notes
Don’t even think of chucking the potato innards; you can make garlicky mashed potatoes or gnocchi out of them later.
Be careful not to bake or broil the filled potato skins for too long, because -- as you probably already know -- overcooked cheese has a tendency to turn into plastic.
Some people deep fry potato skins to get them extra crispy, but I think they're plenty delicious baked.
13 comments
Abby Bean says:
Jan 29, 2013
I was wondering why my potato skins are always a little on the mushy side- no oil on the skins! Thanks for the tip
P.S. you can also make homefries out of what you’ve scooped out of the skins
Jojo says:
Jan 30, 2013
I’ve been trying to decide what to make for Superbowl Sunday & I think this is it! I have a freezer full of Daiya and I love potato skins!
Barb@ThatWasVegan? says:
Jan 30, 2013
I love, love, love vegan potato skins! These look fabulous!
Kelly says:
Feb 4, 2013
I am making these tonight! Do I bake the potatoes on a baking sheet, or right on the oven rack?
claryn says:
Feb 5, 2013
When you bake them the first time, you can bake them right on the rack. The second time (once they’re filled), do it on a baking sheet!
Kelly says:
Feb 5, 2013
What kind of vegan Cheddar did you use? I used Daiya, and it didn’t really melt.
It tasted good, though.
claryn says:
Feb 5, 2013
Oh no! I’ve used Daiya as well as Follow Your Heart–the latter melts at a lower temperature, but holds up less well once it’s melted. In either case (but especially with Daiya), the trick is to leave the sheet under the broiler at the end until it’s nicely melted. It will melt if you give it enough heat and time!
Corinne says:
Mar 11, 2013
Awesome! These look so killer… Do you have any good recipes for homemade vegan cheese/ sour cream? Thank you!
Alice says:
Dec 12, 2013
What did you use for the sour cream?
claryn says:
Dec 12, 2013
Tofutti and Follow Your Heart both make vegan sour cream that you can purchase at the grocery store. If you’d prefer to make your own, you can use tofu or cashews as a base; just Google “vegan sour cream recipe.”
L says:
Feb 6, 2014
These are great! I’ve been craving potato skins (which is weird, since I rarely ate them even before I went vegan), and this recipe was exactly what I wanted. I even think I liked it better than the traditional version.
I used adzuki bacon recipe from the No Meat Athlete website (it easily crumbled) and did a garlic aioli (with Veganaise) instead of sour cream.
I can’t wait for an excuse to make these again.
claryn says:
Feb 6, 2014
Awesome! Good call with the garlic aioli. I hadn’t seen that adzuki bacon recipe before, but I’ll have to try it!
Laurel says:
Jan 19, 2015
These were good! I loved the oil coating on the skins. My husband mistakenly cut them all in half, so we had half-skins, and the cheese kind of fell out of some a bit, but they still worked
I used tempeh bacon and Follow Your Heart Fiesta Blend cheese, and my carnivorous husband used a dairy sharp cheddar and added smoky vegan bacon bits to the tempeh bacon (too smoky for my taste). I also used Whole Foods’ recipe for cashew sour cream http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/recipe/cashew-sour-cream
A word of caution:
Don’t use coarse ground salt in the oil. It doesn’t mix in with the oil and spices and so you end up heaping it on the last few potatoes.
Also: If making sour cream, note that the recipe does NOT call for pepper. That was kind of a weird experience