Hasselhoff Potatoes

A while back, my sister made these awesome potatoes when we were visiting for dinner. She got the recipe from a friend, who got the recipe from Pinterest. Good ol' Pinterest. The original ones are called Hasselback potatoes. Mine are called Hasselhoff potatoes in honour of my brother in law, who couldn't ever remember the real name and forever called them Hasselhoff (as in, David Hasselhoff...). Not too sure why hoff was easier to remember than back.

Anyways, the other day I pulled some leftover farmer sausage from the freezer for dinner and thought I needed a good, flavorful side to go with it. I looked up this potato recipe, realized I didn't have all the ingredients (story of my life), and figured I'd just tweak it to make it my own version.

They. were. so. good. Which makes me wonder just how good the real ones are. See original recipe here.

So here's how I made my version.

Ingredients:
-Potatoes. I used Russets.
-Butter. Preferably real butter, but I didn't have any so I settled for margarine.
-Oil.
-Grated parmesan.
-Salt and Pepper.
-Shredded cheese.

Preheat your oven to First slice your potatoes into about 1/2 inch slices, but not all the way through to the bottom. A tip I got from the original recipe is to use two wooden spoons so your knife doesn't go all the way through. Like this:

I was quite impressed with how well this worked. Funny thing though, while proofreading this post, and after reading the original recipe post again, I realized they said to rest the potato IN the wooden spoon. That would probably work well too. Plus, it's one less spoon to clean.
Next, slice your butter and put in between each (or every other) slice. In my case, I just had to kind of gloop the margarine in there.

Put these babies on a foil lined baking sheet, drizzle with oil, sprinkle the parmesan and salt and pepper.

Throw 'em in a 400F oven for 45 minutes to an hour. I found they didn't need a whole hour, because mine turned out a little crispier than I would've liked.
Sprinkle some of that shredded cheese on top of each potato, throw 'em back in the oven until the cheese is melty. Not crunchy, like mine were.

See? A little too crunchy. Nevertheless, they still had an amazing taste. Next time I'll just take them out a little sooner.
I served these with steamed carrots and asparagus, and that farmer sausage I was talking about, and it turned out to be a pretty decent bite.

Maybe I just need to learn about food photography.

-J


P.S. Stay tuned for the next Fantastic Find Friday! I can't wait to show you what I picked up!