These dutch oven baked red potatoes make an easy side dish for any dinner.  Prepping goes quickly and they cook in about an hour.  I made these to go with some grilled honey chipotle glazed boneless chicken thighs and it was fantastic.

Ingredients:

• Red potatoes, 1 per person
• vegetable or olive oil
• your favorite all-purpose spice blend — I used a peppercorn herb rub

Equipment:

• Dutch Oven — I used my 4 quart oven to make 4 potatoes.
• Sharp knife
• Cutting board
• Basting Brush (optional)

Instructions:

Thoroughly wash your potatoes and pat them dry with paper towels or a cloth.  You want the potatoes to be roughly the same size so they’ll be done at the same time.

With your knife, cut slices through the potato about 3/4 of the way down.  Make your slices about 1/16th of an inch wide.  Continue along the entire potato.  It is important to use a sharp knife to maintain control of your cutting depth.

Rub the potatoes with oil completely.  Try your best to get in between each slice.  This is where the basting brush comes in handy.

Apply your rub to the potato.  Try to get some in between the slices.

Place the potatoes in your dutch oven, making sure they aren’t touching.  You want room for air to move around each potato.

For my 4 quart dutch oven, I placed 8 coals underneath and 12 on top.  Later, I added a few more to the top to help maintain temperature.  For a larger oven, use 12 coals underneath and 24 on top.

The potatoes took about 50 minutes to bake.  I could have let them go another 5-10 minutes to brown a bit more on the top, but my coals were dying down at that point so I decided it was good enough.

Honey chipotle glazed boneless chicken thighs with dutch oven baked red potatoes and baked beans.  YUM!

Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda’s:

• As I mentioned, it would have been good to bake the potatoes for a few more minutes.
• I used vegetable oil, but I bet olive oil would be really good too.
• There are lots of seasoning options — Plain old salt and pepper would be nice.
• Had I thought of it, I would have sprinkled some fresh chopped chives on top after baking.