Sliced Garlic Baked Potatoes (Hassleback Potatoes)

Here's a little Scandinavian treat I whipped up the other night! Even though I am Danish, and my mother used to cook all kinds of Scandinavian dishes when we were growing up, she never made these and now I'm super mad at her. These are pretty to look at, easy to make, and fun to eat. They are called Hassleback Potatoes and a Google search pulls up a ton of results for recipes.

I used some good sized russet baking potatoes, but I think any sized potato would work fine, you would just need to adjust the cooking times. Mine took a little over an hour, and even then the very center of each slice was still a bit too firm and we ended up nuking each potato for a couple minutes longer. I think next time I'll make smaller ones of a waxy variety.

You will need;

• 1 medium to large potato for each person (I used 2)
• 2-3 large cloves of garlic, sliced thin
• butter
• olive oil
• salt & pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 450* and scrub your potatoes. Using a VERY sharp knife, carefully slice the potato thinly ALMOST all the way through, but leaving the slices intact on the bottom. I've read in a couple recipes that you can place the potato on the divet of a wooden spoon as a slicing guide, but I have not used this technique. Place the thin slices of garlic in between the potato slices, doubling up on some if needed. Place on a lined baking sheet, drizzle with olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Place VERY thinly sliced pats of butter on the top of the potatoes, so the butter will melt into the slices when cooking, and place into the oven for 40-90 minutes depending on the size of your potatoes.

We served these with some Pan Roasted Brussel Sprouts and Perfect Pan Fried Pork Chops.

 Once again, we used standard baking russets and ours took over an hour and were still not totally done. Charlie mentioned using our convection toaster oven next time and I think that might be a better bet so we don't heat up the house so much.