Ham and Cheese Stuffed Potatoes

I don’t know about you, but I really hate to throw away food. I mean I really, really dislike it. When I have to throw away something out of the fridge, all I can see is dollars and cents going into the trash can. BeeBop and I work pretty darn hard for the money that we (okay, I) spend at the grocery store every week so when I see it being thrown away like that, it just makes me mad.

I had a group of neighborhood ladies over for bunco last Tuesday and one of the things I served was ham biscuits. Little tiny tea biscuits sliced in half with ham inside. Now, if we’d been having ham and biscuits for breakfast I would have just cut the ham into pieces, slapped it inside some biscuits and called it good. But since it was a party and since it was the first time I’d been hostess, I wanted to make sure those ham biscuits were nice and pretty. So, I used my smallest biscuit cutter to cut out little rounds of ham the same size as the biscuits. So cute. So good. So wasteful. I had so many leftover odd-shaped pieces of ham! So, I started looking online for an idea of what to do with all that ham. I knew it could be diced up and used in something and then I came across a recipe on Cooking Light’s web site for these ham and cheese stuffed potatoes. I changed the recipe so much that it really isn’t the same recipe any more, but it sure is good!

So, the next time you have leftover ham, make your family some of these yummy stuffed potatoes! Here’s what you need:

4 baking potatoes
1 tblsp butter
2 tblsp chives
2 large shallots
1 ½ cups milk
1 ½ cups (6 oz.) shredded cheese, divided
2 cups chopped cooked ham
2 tblsp chopped fresh parsley
½ tsp salt
½ tsp pepper

Note that I’m making half a recipe in my photos. It’s just me and BeeBop around here and we’d never eat four of these stuffed potatoes. We couldn’t even finish the four halves I made! Anyway, just remember that if you are making the whole recipe you’ll have twice as many ingredients as you see in my photos. Okay?

Scrub the potatoes well and, if cooking in the microwave, prick them several times with a fork. Bake the potatoes either in the oven or microwave. Set aside to cool slightly before continuing with recipe.

When cool enough to handle, split the potatoes  open, scoop out the pulp leaving a ¼ inch thick shell. Reserve the shells.

Preheat oven to 500 degrees.

You want to use two good sized shallots for this recipe. Of course, if you don’t have shallots, you can use onion. Just any old kind. Yellow, white, red, whatever you have on hand.

Heat the butter over medium-high heat. Add the shallot and sauté briefly until softened. Add milk and bring to a simmer.

Pour the milk and shallot mixture over the reserved potato pulp. Add the ham, half the cheese and the remaining ingredients mixing well.

Stuff the reserved potato shells with the ham and cheese mixture. Sprinkle evenly with the remaining cheese.

Just a word or two about the cheese I used for this recipe. I chose Gruyere because it’s my favorite. It’s so creamy and nutty and just plain good! However, it is not inexpensive. As you can see, it’s more expensive than a good steak. That’s why I only buy it occasionally. Really. So, if you don’t want to spend that much money for cheese to stuff a potato with, please by all means just use a good sharp cheddar. Much more budget friendly and every bit as flavorful!

Bake for 6-8 minutes or until the cheese begins to brown.

Enjoy!