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I made twice-baked potatoes, using the NYT recipe*, but without measuring it precisely. The potato filling was creamy and mounded up to twice each potato half's height when I put it in the oven. By the time they were in the oven for 20 minutes, though (less than half the cooking time), the filling had liquified and was starting to ooze out of the potatoes onto the baking sheet.

Any idea why the filling didn't hold together, and became a gooey ooze at 400F? Like I said, I didn't measure the ingredients precisely, what did I maybe add too much or too little of? If I added too much sour cream or milk, it was only 20-50% too much, not triple.

* since it's paywalled, the recipe has:

  • baked russet potatoes
  • sour cream
  • butter
  • milk
  • cheese

It's pretty similar to most standard recipes, only without the bacon.

FuzzyChef
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    don't know what kind of cheese you were using for the filling, but bluee cheese melts (i usually use goat cheese, which does not melt). you had probably too much cheese+sour cream compared to the non-melting ingridients (or too much filling) – G. B. Nov 23 '23 at 10:03
  • Fontina cheese. – FuzzyChef Nov 23 '23 at 20:44

1 Answers1

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Your potato filling had too little potato, the filling had too much liquid and fat in it, so it couldn't hold its shape. The recipe calls for russet potatoes, which are a dry potato, if you substitute a different potato with a higher water content it effects the balance. The recipe didn't specify the amount of potato, it just says '4 large russet potatoes'. American russets are usually pretty big, a different variety is likely to be smaller.

I haven't found an authoritative answer to the weight of a large russet potato is, however this answer to a previous question defined a large potato as being 300g, which is good enough for our purposes, so the recipe calls for approximately 1.2kg of russet potatoes before baking. Using that baseline if you use less potato you should scale the ingredients accordingly.

I suggest starting with less cream, butter, milk and cheese than the recipe suggests, testing by putting small amounts in the microwave on medium-low until you get the right consistency. That way you can adapt the recipe to different potato varieties.

GdD
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    Oh! Good analysis. One of my longstanding complaints about russet potatoes in the PNW is how they're smaller than the ones sold elsewhere in the country. – FuzzyChef Nov 23 '23 at 22:19