The Delicious Southern Seafood Upgrade To Try On Your Next Baked Potato

Few foods are more deliciously comforting on a cold winter evening than a baked potato. Fluffy, tender, carby flesh inside crisp, salty skin instantly warms and satiates, especially with the classic combo of butter, sour cream, and chives or topped with Southwestern flavors that make you feel like a cowboy. As every potato-lover knows, this is the true magic of this humble tuber: They're a starchy, delicious foundation for nearly anything that strikes your fancy.

That's why, if you're not in the mood for a jacket potato drizzled in smoky barbeque goodness, you can easily pivot east to dig into staple Southern-style potluck dishes for inspiration. Potatoes pair beautifully with everything from pimento cheese and grape jelly-glazed meatballs, for example, to briny, indulgent seafood unique to the coastal South. Areas along the Gulf of Mexico and the lower East Coast are well-known for incredibly fresh shrimp, crab, mullet, and grouper. Picture smoky, creamy mullet dip or flakey grilled grouper drizzled in garlic butter atop a perfectly tender baked potato.

After all, seafood and potatoes are already a perfect pair, so this upgrade makes a ton of sense. Just be sure to cook your potatoes and seafood separately to avoid underbaking your potato or overcooking your fish. It's also best to stay away from shredded cheese, which may clash with your chosen fish. Fluff the potato's flesh with Creole seasoning or Old Bay-infused compound butter, add the succulent seafood of your choice, and enjoy.

Other than how undeniably tasty it is, the best thing about this baked potato upgrade is you can enjoy it for weeks and never eat the same dish twice. Aside from the aforementioned combinations, there are plenty of ways to change up the flavors and make it feel fancier than the sum of its parts. For instance, if you have a few spoonfuls of leftover stuffed baked shrimp scampi, you can turn them into a full meal by mashing the inside of your baked potato with a little olive oil (to keep things light) and spooning the reheated shrimp on top. Dust with chives to finish things off.

Crab cakes are another craveable possibility, especially mini versions that often serve as appetizers at holiday parties and other celebratory gatherings. Simply mince them fairly small and mix them into the flesh of a still-warm baked potato (along with a little mayo or sour cream to keep things creamy and moist). You can then chuck the baked potato back into the oven for a few minutes to ensure everything is the appropriate temperature before digging in.

Though this is a tasty, elevated way to use seafood leftovers, you can also make this type of baked potato on purpose with less expensive seafood, such as smaller sizes of shrimp or prepackaged crab meat from your grocery store's seafood section. They mix more easily into a baked potato's creamy center than larger, more expensive options.