Jacket Potato - Various Toppings

Why? Easy to prepare in advance for a quick hot meal option on a grey day. You can often buy baking potatoes in packs of 4 and some of the fillings too which is why this one has been worked out as 4 portions. With jacket potatoes you can come up with endless possibilities for fillings. Here are just listed a few ideas (some healthier than others!) with costs.

Number of Portions: 4 

Shopping List

• 4 pack of baking potatoes

Fillings

• Pack salted butter
• Heinz baked bean snap-pots (4 portions)
• 250g pack supermarket brand grated cheese
• 2 tins tuna & 200g jar mayonnaise
• Pack smoked mackerel & pack of supermarket brand light soft-cheese

How to Prepare:

The Jacket Potatoes 

If you want really tasty potatoes then it is worth a little preparation. The day before you go to work, bake your potatoes in advance by preheating the oven to  200C/400F/Gas 6. Wash the potatoes well, dry them and prick all over with a fork then rub olive oil over the potatoes and pop in a baking tray. Sprinkle with salt and bake in the oven for  1 to 1.5 hours until golden and soft in the middle. A good tip is to stick a metal skewer through the potatoes which will conduct heat to the middle of the potato and speed up the baking time. Let the potatoes cool and wrap them individually in tin foil to keep them clean and in neat little packages to take to work. You can then reheat your potato in a microwave (or even have cold if there isn't one available) and top off with your choice of filling.

Fillings

• Rough up your microwaved jacket potato with a fork and simply top with a small knob of salted butter (about 10g), or;
• Top your jacket potato with one of the portions of beans and pop in the microwave to hot up, or;
• Add about a quarter of a 250g packet of medium cheddar cheese to your microwaved potato, or;
• Mix half a tin of tuna (100g) with a dollop of mayonnaise (about 15g) and top your hot potato, or;
• Mix about a quarter of a 200g pack of light soft-cheese with a quarter of a pack (usually 200-250g) of smoked mackerel and add to a hot potato

*Costs are based on prices published on https://www.mysupermarket.co.uk at the time of writing (08/07/2008). Cost and nutritional values are calculated based on portion containing a standard baking potato and either a small knob of butter, or heinz baked bean snap-pots, or a 60g serving of grated medium cheddar, or half a 200g tin of supermarket brand tuna and 15g heinz mayo, or a 50g smoked mackerel 50g of supermarket brand light soft-cheese.