On their own, baked potatoes are one of the absolute best foods. They’re cheap, filling, and require practically zero effort to make. All you really need is salt, pepper, and a pat of butter. You could be satisfied — no, delighted — by this simplest of preparations. But let us indulge, if you will, in what a humble baked potato could become.
You don’t even need a recipe. With just a little bit of creativity, you can transform a baked potato into something extraordinary: a complete meal, to start. You can stuff baked potatoes with hearty chili or pulled pork. They’re also delicious stuffed with shredded bbq chicken or buffalo chicken. But we like to think of this starchy, tender, flakey tuber as a blank canvas. The potato is your oyster? Honestly, we’re not really sure what that means, but here are 25 ways to have baked potatoes for your next meal.