{What's Cooking?} Twice Baked Ranch Potatoes

Judy's challenge for us this week was to use ranch dressing mix. My first plan was to make the chicken and veggie casserole I used to make. I  think I originally saw the recipe in a Hidden Valley Ranch commercial.  But I couldn't work up the enthusiasm for that, and we had a big bag of potatoes already, so we wound up with twice baked potatoes.

 

I scrubbed about six large russets and baked them for two hours, or however long it was until I remembered they were in the oven. We had some errands to run, so they went into the fridge until I was ready to make dinner. Then I sliced each potato in half, scraped the insides into a vintage Pyrex bowl (because if I've gotta be in the kitchen, I'm at least going to play with my toys) and mixed the cooked potato with butter, cream cheese, a packet of Hidden Valley Ranch dressing mix, pepper (no salt, because I figured the dressing mix had that covered), and about eight strips of cooked and crumbled bacon. If there had been cheddar in the fridge, I would have added cheese too.

When I had everything mashed together with my vintage potato masher (see above), I refilled the potatoes and baked them again at 450 for about half an hour. Everyone except for Teenage Daughter (who saw me adding the ranch dressing mix and loudly voiced her criticism) enjoyed them. She didn't get any. But I'm guessing she'll eat next week's rice pudding, even if Judy did suggest the ingredients.

This post is linked to What's Cooking? at Patchwork Times and Works for me Wednesday at We are THAT family.