Armadillo Potatoes

As I have said before, I love potatoes and can hardly resist them when either thought about or put in front of me. What’s really nice about potatoes is that they are incredibly versatile, so there are countless ways to prepare them. Lately I have been seeing armadillo potatoes on my web surfing journeys, and I finally decided I needed to try these myself.

Aside from finding the best shape and size of potato for these, you have to choose what you want to stuff them with. I’ve seen a myriad of stuffing from pesto to bread crumbs, but since I also have a love of garlic I decided to keep it simple and stick to something I knew for sure I’d like.

Armadillo Potatoes with Garlic

• 4 medium-sized potatoes (I used Idaho potatoes), scrubbed and bad parts cut away
• 3 – 4 cloves garlic (or more or less depending on your taste)
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. Cover a pizza or cookie sheet with foil and set aside.

Clean your potatoes and cut away any bad parts.

Take a potato and slice partway through the top of it, but not all the way.

Do this every 1/4 inch or so depending on the size of your potatoes, as well as how much stuffing you will have.

Unfortunately, I noticed that one of my potatoes had a bad spot right in the middle, but I decided to salvage it. I tore away the slices that were bad and just sliced around the middle, so only a small part of the potato was lost.

After each potato has been sliced, rinse them off and then wrap halfway in foil. This ensures that the stuffing will continue to flavor the potato even if it drips out.

Take your cloves of garlic and give thanks that they exist. Many many yummy thanks…

While I love garlic, I don’t really like the green shoot in the middle (it’s a bit bitter), so after taking the garlic skins off I cut off the very bottom and then cut it down the middle so I can take out the green part.

Crush the garlic into a small bowl, or chop it finely and put it into a small bowl.

Add the olive oil and salt and mix. With a spoon insert a little bit of the stuffing in between each slice of potato. Note that you may have to increase the garlic and/or the olive oil to ensure that you have enough for all of the potatoes.

After you have stuffed all the potatoes, place them in the oven and bake for half an hour. At this point check them by poking with a knife to make sure they are done. If you’re like me and consistently wind up with underdone potatoes you should probably leave them in for an additional 10 or 15 minutes and check again.

Once they are done, bring them out of the oven and let them cool a few minutes before serving.

I felt these were really good, but I think that they could have used more garlic and olive oil. I was really generous with the first potato, so I probably should have paced myself. What can I say, though? That first potato had the most flavor.

These did take a while to prepare. Ideally this would be a lot faster, but because this was my first time I wasn’t completely organized. I also think that these potatoes would have been easier to deal with if I had sliced them completely in half, then slice those halves with the 1/4 inch slices (maybe even baking faster or more thoroughly?). As it was, since potatoes are generally not flat, half the time I was trying to keep them still while I sliced.

Still, though, I may try these again and experiment with the stuffing. Any ideas?

Related posts:

• Scalloped Potatoes
• Dill Pesto
• The Boleyn Inheritance – Twice Baked Potatoes
• Roasted Fingerling Potatoes
• Mashed Potatoes and Turnips/Rutabagas with Gravy

Tagged as: fresh garlic, olive oil, potatoes, salt