Loaded 'Baked' Potato Pizza

Loaded ‘Baked’ Potato Pizza

If you are regular viewer of the 5 o’clock rush especially on Instagram, you will notice that I like to include a starch with my daily dinners. This could be rice, pasta, bread and especially potatoes.

So when I had this awesome opportunity to create a unique potato recipe using The Little Potato Company ® I was more than thrilled.

 

The Little Potato Company Potatoes

The Little Potato Company Potatoes

The great features about these potatoes are:

  • Proprietary potatoes – grown to full maturity
  • Available year-round and always in stock
  • Even cooking time
  • High quality – grown with care and hand-sorted
  • Fresh – straight from the farm
  • Quick – pre-washed, no peeling, no waste or extra prep
  • Nutritious – fat, gluten, and cholesterol free
  • Thin skinned – excellent source of potassium
  • Easy to prepare – roast, microwave, oven, BBQ
  • Great plate appeal

I received two of The Little Potato Company ® varieties:

Something Blue ™ has a unique, beautiful contrast of colours – yellow flesh with purple streaks, and bright blue/purple skin. Something Blue delivers a well-balanced, slightly exotic flavour that has great colour retention, and is excellent for roasting or barbecuing.

The Little Potato Company Potatoes

The Little Potato Company Potatoes

Blushing Belle ™ is extremely versatile, and adapts well to a variety of cooking methods. Named after its blushing red skin and buttery yellow flesh, Blushing Belle delivers a soft, light texture with mild, delicate flavor. Excellent roasted or mashed.

The Little Potato Company ® potatoes are also available in a MICROWAVE READY varieties.

Providing freshly steamed, perfectly seasoned potatoes in just minutes, Microwave Ready kits are all about making wholesome and delicious that much easier. Simply microwave in the conveniently included steam tray, toss with the precisely pre-mixed seasoning and voila – full-on flavour the whole family will love. The only hard part will be deciding which flavour to try first!

My ‘chef’ thinking cap came up with this recipe for Loaded ‘Baked’ Potato Pizza.

Some of the components of a Loaded Baked Potato that I enjoy are bacon, chives, broccoli and loads of cheese or cheese sauce put on another favourite of mine…..PIZZA! And then add sour cream for dipping.

I decided to make a homemade crust for this recipe. The pizza crust recipe is from The Pioneer Woman Cooks, Ree Drummond who is an adventurous and creative food blogger. Ree’s recipe below is better made ahead at least 24 hours in advance. But it is super easy and very user-friendly.

There is always the option to use a store-bought pizza crust or even Naan bread.

My Favorite Pizza from The Pioneer Woman Cooks

Makes 2 Crusts

Mise En Place

  • 1 teaspoon Active Dry Or Instant Yeast
  • 4 cups All-purpose Flour
  • 1 teaspoon Kosher Salt
  • 1/3 cup Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Sprinkle yeast over 1 1/2 cups warm (not lukewarm) water.
In a mixer, combine flour and salt. With the mixer running on low-speed (with paddle attachment), drizzle in olive oil until combined with flour. Next, pour in yeast/water mixture and mix until just combined.

Coat a separate mixing bowl with a light drizzle of olive oil, and form the dough into a ball. Toss to coat dough in olive oil, then cover the bowl tightly with plastic wrap and store in the fridge until you need it.

*** It’s best to make the dough at least 24 hours in advance, and 3 or 4 days is even better.

Cheddar Cheese Sauce

Mise En Place

Mise En Place

Mise En Place

  • 2 tbsp. butter
  • 2 tbsp. all-purpose flour
  • 1 cup milk
  • 1 cup extra old Cheddar cheese, grated
  • 1 cup Herb cheese
  • ¼ tsp. salt
  • ¼ tsp. pepper
  • ½ tsp. Red Hot sauce

In saucepan, melt butter over medium heat; whisk in flour and cook, stirring, for 1 minute. Gradually whisk in milk and cook, whisking constantly, until thickened, about 7 minutes. Remove from heat. Stir in cheese, salt, pepper, and Red Hot until cheese is melted.

There is a new cheese sauce available on your grocery store shelves, which can be used in a pinch.

Loaded ‘Baked’ Potato Pizza

Loaded "Baked" Potato Pizza with Sour Cream

Loaded “Baked” Potato Pizza with Sour Cream

Loaded Baked Potato Pizza

Loaded ‘Baked’ Potato Pizza

Mise En Place

Toppings Mise En Place

Toppings Mise En Place
Bacon, Green Onions, Chives and Broccoli

  • Pizza Dough recipe above, halved
  • 1 cup favourite pizza or tomato sauce
  • 1 cup Cheddar cheese sauce, recipe above
  • 2 cups mozzarella, grated
  • 6 The Little Potato Company ® Blushing Belles potatoes™, cooked and sliced
  • 6 The Little Potato Company ® Something Blues potatoes™, cooked and sliced
  • 1 cup broccoli florets, blanched
  • 4 slices bacon, cooked and cut into pieces
  • 4 green onions, cleaned and sliced on the bias
  • 2 tbsp. fresh chives
  • olive oil
  • salt and pepper

NOTE: I cooked The Little Potato Company ® Blushing Belles potatoes™ and The Little Potato Company ® Something Blues potatoes ™ for 9 minutes as I wanted to ensure that the potatoes remain the ‘circle’ shape. 😉

Preheat oven to 500 degrees.

Drizzle olive oil on a large baking sheet using HALF the pizza dough, and lightly coat the dough with a little olive oil and lightly flour both sides. Pull and stretch on the dough, working it into a thin rectangle shape. No rolling necessary; the dough will be very thin, which is what you are looking for. The dough is very forgiving, if a hole or tear develops in the crust just pinch to seal.

Pizza Crust

Pizza Crust

Once you achieve the desire size and rectangle shape lightly drizzle some olive oil over the crust using your fingers to spread it all over the dough.

Coat the pizza dough with the pizza or tomato based sauce and cheddar cheese sauce leaving a ½ inch border for a crust.

Pizza Crust with Sauce and Cheddar Cheese Sauce

Pizza Crust with Sauce and Cheddar Cheese Sauce

Sprinkle with mozzarella.

Add The Little Potato Company ® Blushing Belles potatoes™ slices and The Little Potato Company ® Something Blues potatoes™ slices alternately as you would pepperoni.

Add the remaining toppings of bacon, broccoli, and green onions.

Sprinkle with salt and pepper.

Bake for 10 to 12 minutes, or until crust is golden brown and the cheese is bubbly. Remove from pan. Sprinkle with fresh chopped chives.

Slice with a pizza cutter. Serve with sour cream for dipping.

TIP: Use your kitchen shears to cut the cooked bacon and to finely cut the fresh chives.

The Loaded ‘Baked’ Potato Pizza was a hit with the family especially with the sour cream for dipping.

All of the toppings including The Little Potato Company ® potatoes could be the leftovers from a previous dinner. The other crust was made into a traditional pepperoni and cheese pizza.

Loaded "Baked" Potato Pizza

Loaded “Baked” Potato Pizza

Loaded 'Baked' Potato Pizza

Loaded ‘Baked’ Potato Pizza

All views are my own. I was contacted by @LittlePotatoCompany to write my honest review about their products. The 5 o’clock rush was not paid to write this post.

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Buffalo Chicken and Loaded Potato Bake

I do love trying “buffalo” food in all forms.

Buffalo wing wraps, mac and cheese, pizza, nachos, poutine and of course wings right from the Anchor Bar in Buffalo, NY.

So armed with package of chicken breasts in the fridge, I was looking for inspiration. My DD was requesting another dinner where we could have Baked Potatoes with a selection of toppings. I immediately thought of another bar menu item…potato skins. I found an inspiration recipe that contained both.

Of course I tweaked it. 😉

When I think of Buffalo wings, carrot and celery sticks with a creamy blue cheese dip are always included and in my opinion you can’t do anything buffalo without some blue cheese! I added the celery and carrot components, next for the ‘potato skins’ aspect of cheeses, bacon and tomato garnish were added to the finished recipe.

Served with a blue cheese and sour cream sauce it was delicious. And spicy like Buffalo should be!

So if you love all the great flavor of Buffalo wing sauce and potato skins, here is a recipe for Buffalo Chicken and Loaded Potato Bake that contains both. Hope you will try the recipe and enjoy!

Buffalo Chicken and Loaded Potato Bake

Serves 4-6  approx. 45-50 min.
Adapted from Loaded Potato And Buffalo Chicken Casserole Recipe – Food.com
Buffalo Chicken and Loaded Potato Bake

Buffalo Chicken and Loaded Potato Bake

Mise En Place

  • 1 package of boneless skinless chicken breasts, cut into 1 inch cubes
  • 7 medium potatoes, skin-on, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
  • 2 carrots, peeled and cut on the bias
  • 2 stalks of celery, cleaned and diced
  • ¼ of red onion, chopped
  • 1/3 cup olive oil
  • 1 tsp. salt
  • 1 tsp. fresh ground pepper
  • 1 tbsp. paprika
  • 1 tbsp. garlic powder
  • 4 tbsp. Red Hot sauce, depending on spice tolerance 😉
  • 2 tbsp. agave syrup

Topping

  • 1 cup marble cheese, grated
  • 1 cup mozzarella, grated
  • 1/3 cup blue cheese, crumbled
  • 5 strips of Ready Cook bacon, cooked and cut into pieces*
  • 1 tomato, concasse**

Sauce

  • 1/3 cup 1% sour cream
  • 1/3 cup mayonnaise
  • ¼ tsp. sriracha
  • 1 tsp. Dijon mustard
  • Salt and pepper to taste

 

Preheat oven to 500F.

In a large bowl mix together the olive oil, hot sauce, salt, pepper, garlic powder, paprika and agave syrup.

Add the potatoes and stir to coat.

Add the potatoes to a greased baking dish.

Using a slotted spoon, scoop the potatoes into the baking dish, leave behind any extra olive oil/hot sauce mix.

Add the diced chicken, red onions and celery to this hot sauce/spice mix and stir to coat all the chicken. Marinate the chicken as the potatoes bake.

Roast the potatoes for 15 minutes at 500F, then stir and add the carrots, cooked for additional 8 min then reduce the oven to 400F. Stir the potatoes and carrots then add to the top, the marinated chicken, onions and celery. Cook for additional 5 minutes.

In a large bowl mix all the topping ingredients together. Add the cheese topping to the chicken and potatoes.

Bake 10-15 minutes or until the chicken is cooked through and the topping is melted and bubbly delicious. Add the tomato concasse and the Ready Cook Bacon pieces.

Buffalo Chicken and Loaded Potato Bake

Buffalo Chicken and Loaded Potato Bake

Mix the sauce ingredients together in a small bowl, drizzle over the Buffalo Chicken Bake and serve on the side.

Buffalo Chicken and Loaded Potato Bake

Buffalo Chicken and Loaded Potato Bake

 

* The recipe could be adapted and the potatoes could be replaced with sweet potatoes. Scrub the outer skin of sweet potatoes, cubed and follow the directions above. Reduce the cooking time for the sweet potatoes.

** The Ready Cook Bacon is a convenience product that I always have in my pantry. I used scissors to quickly cut up the bacon strips.

*** Concasse, from the French concasser, “to crush or grind”, is a cooking term meaning to rough chop any ingredient, usually vegetables. This term is particularly applied to tomatoes, where tomato concasse is a tomato that has been peeled, seeded (seeds and skins removed), and chopped to specified dimensions. I usually skip the peeled part but definitely remove the seeds as then tend to bitter.