Upgrade Your Next Loaded Baked Potato With A Creamy Seafood Topping

Since baked potatoes are such a versatile dish, we know we can deploy them as a side or the main event and top them with everything from Greek yogurt to mascarpone. But one ingredient (or category of ingredients) that typically doesn't make most peoples' list? Seafood. If you're not a fan of the typical bacon-and-chive toppings, or if you're trying to get your protein in without adding meat to your potatoes, stuffing them with seafood can be an incredibly tasty alternative.

While seafood is the starring flavor in these types of baked spuds, it's not the only ingredient that goes into them. They typically involve a creamy base, which is made of a combination of cheeses and other dairy products. If you're a fan of fish and chips with tartar sauce, chipotle sauces on fish tacos, or crab cakes and remoulade, you know how delicious seafood can be when paired with creamy condiments. 

Instead of fries (aka chips) or tortillas, using baked potatoes underneath this flavor combo adds a soft, hearty base. Plus, seafood baked potatoes are simple to whip up, but unexpected enough that they'll impress whoever you're serving them to.

What type of seafood should you fill your baked potatoes with? It depends on what you enjoy eating, of course, but a few popular options are shrimp, crab meat, crawfish tails, and lobster tails. You can go with just one of these, or mix and match two — but we wouldn't recommend any more than that, since baked potatoes can easily get overwhelmed with too many toppings. Make sure to get your seafood ready to cook and eat before doing anything else, which can mean peeling and deveining your shrimp, mincing your crab meat, removing the shells, and cutting your lobster tails.

While you bake your potatoes as you normally would, make the sauce on the stove after you cook your seafood. Seasonings for your protein can include Old Bay, Cajun, paprika, garlic powder, and onion powder, and the sauce can incorporate butter, garlic, wine, cream cheese, mozzarella, Monterey Jack, parmesan, heavy cream, half and half, or sour cream. Add in a little flour to thicken, or some chicken broth to thin. Once the seafood and sauce are mixed together, you can either place them on top of soft baked potato halves or scoop out the spud flesh and stir it in with your mixture. If you go with the latter, feel free to stuff everything back into your potato skins and pop them back in the oven for a few minutes until warm.