Russet Baked Potato Fans aka Hasselback Potatoes

Russet baked potato fans served alongside pan-fried rainbow trout.

Tonight we had some fish. Nothing new, just some fried Rainbow Trout. I selected fish because I thought they'd go great with some Russet Baked Potato Fans. And it's been a while since we had fish. And I wanted fish. So we had fish.

When I looked around at Russet baked potato fans online, I found they are called "Hasselback" potatoes and are of Swedish descent. Here I thought I was breaking the potato fan mold with this new idea of mine.

It seems the Hasselbacks typically have a bread crumb topping, which I didn't get into experimenting with at this point. I simply chose to loosely follow the baked red potato fan recipe I'd used previously. This time with butter.

Normally, I'm a stickler for exact measurements. This time, I just lubed, slathered and sprinkled until it looked right.

Russet Baked Potato Fans

2 Russet potatoes

extra-virgin olive oil
butter, room temperature
dry basil (because I really like basil)
coarse salt
fresh-cracked pepper

Heat oven to 400°F. Line a baking sheet with foil. Mist the foil with olive oil.

Use chopsticks as dowels to prevent the potatoes from being sliced through. Afix them to a cutting board.  I used Scotch tape.  Place a potato between the sticks and slice finely. If you cut through the potato, not counting the very ends, your dowels are not far enough apart. Scootch the sticks out, afix them, and try again. Don't throw the loose potato slices away! They'll cook just fine. Trust me.

Once the potatoes are finely sliced (not all the way through!), place them on baking sheet and spray them with olive oil from a MISTO.

Smear room temperature butter over the top halves of the potatoes.

Sprinkle salt, pepper and basil over the buttered potatoes.

Bake potatoes in 400°F 40-45 minutes or until they feel soft when pierced with a fork.

Oh, yeah. Mmm. These are good. I'll definitely do these again.  Maybe next time I'll do the bread crumb topping.  Yeah.  I'll try that for sure. 

Cost:

• potatoes: $0.60
• let's assume $0.40 for everything else

That makes these two delicious potatoes $0.50 each.  Yep, definitely going to have these again. 

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