Potato Skins Take Your Burger To The Next Level (And Not In The Way You May Think)

As burgers and its toppings continuously grow in their grandeur, the bun remains simple. Brioche or white bread (with sesame seeds or everything bagel seasoning for an extra flair) houses blue cheese-stuffed burgers, grilled peaches, or truffle butter, all while rarely straying from its classic form. Burgers deserve to be elevated with better buns — and potato skins are the perfect answer.

Using the ingredient for burgers may sound like simply roasting the spud's outer layer to make a crispy, salty topping, but we mean using the potato skins as buns — specifically, loaded potato skins. Outside of opting for fluffy, sweet buns over a thin, white slice, there are not many ways to truly punch up the bread. With potato skins, you can stuff them with all the bacon, cheese, chives, mushrooms, and any other fixing you would normally add to burgers. With all these ingredients condensed into two skins, the fanciful meat and potatoes dish ensures you get a wide range of flavors in each bite.

Start out by making loaded potato skins as normal — bake the tubers, slice them lengthwise, and scoop out the filling, leaving around ¼ inch of flesh. Brush oil and a sprinkle of salt on the skins before returning them to the oven. After a few minutes, fill it with bacon, cheese, and peppers and bake it once more. After the skins have cooled slightly, place one on each side of the cooked burger and enjoy.

Using potato skins as buns can mean that you don't have to rely on toppings for extra flavor, but if you're a fan of an elaborate burger, utilize both the skins and fixings. With dishes like a smoky chipotle burger, opting for potato skins allows you to double up on not just toppings, but meat as well. To complement the spicy chipotle and jalapeño sauce, load up your potato skin buns with chorizo. After sautéing the meat, mix it with Mexican crema, cilantro, Monterey Jack cheese, and a squeeze of lime juice.

For bison burgers, sweet and savory bacon jam stuffed potato skins make the perfect buns. Along with the jam, stuff the spud's skins with blue cheese, chives, and minced jalapeños. The buns carry plenty of flavor for the burgers, but if you're looking for a heftier meal, top off your meal with grilled mushrooms and arugula. Alternatively, if you like the sweeter side of burgers, you can always turn sweet potatoes into burger buns too. Stuffed with bacon, red peppers, and cheddar, the slightly caramelized loaded sweet potato skins are the icing on top of blended beef and white bean BBQ burgers.