Game Time Beef BBQ Potato Skins -- Fired Up in Mama's Memory

February 14, 2024. Valentine's Day. The phone rang at six in the morning, and I knew. The way you know when the phone rings before dawn and your mother is eighty-seven and the knowing is in your body before it's in your mind — a cold spreading through your chest, a weight settling on your shoulders, the gravity of the world increasing by the exact amount of one small woman's absence.

Pearlie Mae Johnson died in her sleep at the Whitehaven assisted living facility. She was eighty-seven years old. She was five-one and maybe a hundred and ten pounds by the end. She was the toughest food critic in Shelby County. She was the woman who cleaned rooms at the Peabody Hotel and came home and made sweet potato pie that could make a grown man cry. She was my mother. And she was gone.

I drove to Whitehaven in silence. Rosetta was beside me, her hand on my knee, not speaking because there was nothing to say and everything to say and the two amounts were the same amount. Mama was in her bed, and she looked small — smaller than she'd ever looked in life, which is saying something for a woman who was five-one in her prime. I sat beside her and held her hand — her small hand, the hand that had cooked ten thousand meals and cleaned ten thousand rooms and held five babies and buried a husband and survived ninety years of being Black in Memphis and never once complained about any of it. I held her hand and I said, "You fed us, Mama. You fed us and that was everything."

The funeral was at Mt. Zion Baptist Church. Standing room only. Pastor Williams Jr. officiated — the younger one, who had taken over from his father. I delivered the eulogy. I had written it at the kitchen table at three in the morning because I couldn't sleep and couldn't not write it. I talked about her hands. I talked about the sweet potato pie. I talked about how she raised five children on nothing and made nothing feel like plenty. I talked about the fried catfish on Saturdays and the cornbread every night and the greens simmered with a ham hock and the way she sang hymns while she cooked, off-key and unashamed.

I made it through the whole eulogy without crying until the last line, which was: "She fed us. And that was everything." Then I sat down and let the choir sing "Precious Lord, Take My Hand," and I wept the way a sixty-five-year-old man weeps for his mother, which is exactly the way a five-year-old boy weeps for his mother, because some griefs don't age.

After the funeral, after the repast at the community center where the food was made by the women of Mt. Zion and I didn't cook a single thing because I couldn't and didn't want to and the not-cooking was its own kind of grief, I came home and sat in the backyard next to Uncle Clyde's smoker and I talked to Mama. I told her the pie was safe — Rosetta has the recipe. I told her the cornbread was safe — I make it every week. I told her the stories were safe — I've been writing them down. I told her the grandchildren know her name and her food and her love, and the great-grandchildren will too. I told her she fed us, and we will keep feeding, and the feeding will not stop.

Valentine's Day. The day of love. Rosetta said it was fitting, because Pearlie Mae loved harder than anyone she'd ever known. I suppose it was fitting. Everything about Mama was love — the cooking, the cleaning, the surviving, the sweet potato pie, the telling me I was a big baby every time she saw me for sixty-five years. All of it was love. And the love is not gone. The love is in the pie and the cornbread and the catfish and the cast iron skillet she gave Rosetta in 1984. The love is in the smoker, because Uncle Clyde was Mama's brother, and the fire in the steel drum is Mama's fire too. The love is everywhere. It just doesn't have a body anymore.

I didn’t go back to Uncle Clyde’s smoker to cook something grand — I went back because that steel drum smells like fire and history and Mama’s brother, and standing next to it felt like the closest thing to not being alone that I could find that week. A few days after the repast, when the casserole dishes had all been returned and the house was quiet in that particular way grief makes a house quiet, I fired it up and made something simple and smoky and good — the kind of food Mama would’ve called “something to eat” and meant it as the highest praise. These BBQ beef potato skins aren’t her recipe. But they came out of her fire. And that counts for something.

Game Time Beef BBQ Potato Skins

Prep Time: 20 minutes | Cook Time: 1 hour 10 minutes | Total Time: 1 hour 30 minutes | Servings: 6

Ingredients

• 6 medium russet potatoes, scrubbed
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
• 1 lb lean ground beef
• 1/2 cup BBQ sauce (your favorite), plus extra for drizzling
• 1 teaspoon smoked paprika
• 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1/2 teaspoon onion powder
• 1 1/2 cups shredded sharp cheddar cheese
• 4 strips bacon, cooked crisp and crumbled
• 3 green onions, thinly sliced
• Sour cream, for serving

Instructions

1. Bake the potatoes. Preheat your oven to 400°F. Rub the potatoes all over with olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Place directly on the oven rack and bake for 50–55 minutes, until a fork pierces the center easily. Let cool for 10 minutes.
2. Brown the beef. While the potatoes bake, cook the ground beef in a skillet over medium-high heat, breaking it up, until no longer pink, about 7–8 minutes. Drain excess fat. Stir in the BBQ sauce, smoked paprika, garlic powder, and onion powder. Simmer on low for 5 minutes until the sauce thickens into the meat. Remove from heat.
3. Hollow the skins. Slice each baked potato in half lengthwise. Scoop out the flesh, leaving about a 1/4-inch wall of potato. (Reserve the scooped potato for another use — mashed potatoes, potato cakes, whatever you like.) Brush the inside of each skin lightly with olive oil.
4. Crisp the skins. Increase oven temperature to 425°F. Place the potato skins cut-side down on a baking sheet and bake for 8 minutes. Flip cut-side up and bake another 5 minutes until the edges are golden and crisp.
5. Fill and melt. Divide the BBQ beef mixture evenly among the potato skins. Top each with a generous pinch of shredded cheddar and the crumbled bacon. Return to the oven for 5–7 minutes, until the cheese is fully melted and bubbling.
6. Finish and serve. Transfer to a serving platter. Drizzle lightly with additional BBQ sauce, scatter sliced green onions over the top, and serve hot alongside sour cream for dipping.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 420 | Protein: 24g | Fat: 18g | Carbs: 42g | Fiber: 3g | Sodium: 680mg