Baked Potatoes are such a simple food. Surprisingly, I get a lots of questions about how to prepare them, what to put on them, and what to do with leftovers. As an inherently lazy person I’m just going to write this post and point people here rather than being cordial and actually giving answers. The benefit is that you can avoid personally interacting with me and still get the information. We’re just going to call this a win-win and leave it at that!
What Potatoes Are Best for Baking?
Russets. There is no need to discuss baking other sorts of potatoes, they’re all inferior. While you can get away with a second-rate Yukon Gold or red potato, why bother? As my kids say, “Don’t @ me”, just use Russet potatoes.
Also, while most of these answers apply to Sweet Potatoes…they are potatoes in name only. They aren’t real potatoes, but that’s another topic for another day.
How Do I Prep Potatoes for Baking?
Proper preparation is a big deal. Wash the dirt off, but don’t just do a superficial rinsing! Scrub those potatoes so that the dirt is excised from all the nooks and crannies. While you’re at it, if you run into any eyes (which are the potato equivalent of roots), pop those guys off the potato.
After you wash them , dry them off. They don’t have to be bone-dry, but get as much water as practical off of the skin. You don’t want to steam your potatoes, so reducing the water will help.
Now poke them with a fork. You know all that frustration you bottled up today? Let it out on the potatoes.
I prefer to roast my potatoes in a baking dish. I save a bunch of time by putting the potatoes into a dish (by not having to handle them individually) plus it lets me coat them in oil and not have that splattered all over the oven!
I put some cooking oil in the bottom of the dish and roll the pierced potatoes in the oil. If you prefer, brush the oil onto the potatoes with a pastry brush or put them in a zippered bag with the oil and shake them up. Whatever you do, try to get oil onto the entire surface of each potato.
Next you want to season them. At a minimum use salt and pepper. Lightly sprinkle it over the potatoes while rolling them around in the baking dish. You can use any spices you want, other favorites at Hectic Manor are garlic powder and onion powder. If I’m feeling frisky I’ll use cayenne pepper.
Your potatoes are now ready for baking.
Notice, nowhere in the above info did I mention wrapping in foil. The reason is simple, if you wrap them in foil it’s much hard to actually roast them. You’ll get nicely steamed potatoes, but that means the skins will be soft and pliable. Wouldn’t you rather have crisp skins? Sure, there are lots of times we bake our potatoes in foil at Hectic Manor, but in the most general case just leave the foil in the cabinet and roast those potatoes in their jackets without an overcoat.
How Do I Actually Bake The Potatoes?
In general truly roasted potatoes are going to have to spend some time in the oven, so figure on using your oven for at least part of the process. The simplest method is to simply preheat your oven and then put in the baking dish with your oiled and seasoned potatoes. Notice I didn’t tell you what temperature to preheat your oven to, nor did I tell you how long to bake them. That’s a calculated decision on my part. You see…the jury is out on what’s the perfect temperature and amount of time. Temperature recommendations range from 325F to 450F and time recommendations range from 45 to 90 minutes. After extensive personal testing, I’ve use 375F for 60 minutes at Hectic Manor.
But I’ll be honest here, I don’t really bake my potatoes in the oven the entire time. For years I’ve done a pre-game using the microwave. I usually use the baked potato setting on the microwave. I prep my potatoes by washing, oiling, and seasoning them. Then I put them in the microwave and press the auto-cook setting. When that finishes, I move the potatoes into the preheated oven for 10-15 minutes. The fully cooked potatoes get crisp skins.
Alternatively you can use the convection setting on your oven if you have one. While I’ll cover convection oven cooking in future posts, know that you reduce the amount of time anything will take in the oven when it’s convection cooking. Your oven manual should give you an indication as to what modifications in time and temperature to make, but I usually stick with the same temperature and reduce the time by 25%. Of course, your results may vary.
Because I’m currently still in the honeymoon period with my Instant Pot, I’ve found myself pre-gaming my potatoes in the Instant Pot and then finishing them in the oven. Just this morning I was explaining that I pre-game the potatoes in the Instant Pot while the conventional oven is pre-heating. Then the potatoes are pre-cooked at about the same time the oven is preheated. They move to the oven for finishing and I’ve saved time. In general I pressure cook the potatoes on high with a small amount of water and seasonings for 10 minutes. Then I immediately release the pressure and transfer the potatoes to the oven. I’ve been doing this for several months and I’m in love with the results.
I’ve also tried finishing the potatoes in the Instant Pot by using the sauté setting. I’m still working out the details on how to get uniformly crisp skins on all the potatoes while keeping them hot. I think this method shows a lot of promise, but I don’t quite have it sorted yet. I’ll write more when I’ve got it figured out!
My slow-cooker has also served to pre-game the potatoes. When I slow cook my potatoes, I cook them for 8 hours on low. I’ve read that you can also cook them on high for 5 hours, but honestly I’ve never tried that combination. Again, I don’t want steamed potatoes, so I’m not a fan of using just the microwave, Instant Pot, nor slow-cooker by itself.
Lots of people recommend wrapping the potatoes in foil, but I really don’t like using foil on my baked potatoes, and I’m even more against using it in the slow-cooker. It might be that I have too many fillings, and stray bits of foil turn me into a gigantic AM antenna where I’m picking up radio stations from halfway across the country in my head. But that might just be me!
Most of the time when I cook the potatoes in the slow-cooker it’s because I’ve got something going on that will require me to be gone right up until dinnertime. If I can preset the conventional (or convection) oven to turn on and off at a particular set of times, then I’ll do that…but if my oven doesn’t have that setting, then I’ll pre-game in the slow-cooker and finish in the oven.
Hey Dad, what do we usually put on our baked potatoes?
Seriously, it’s like the Hectic Kids didn’t pay attention to anything that was on the table as they were growing up. Of course, since most of them put everything on their potatoes…I can somewhat understand the number of calls I’ve gotten from the store asking this question. I’ve always told the kids it isn’t a stupid question until you ask the same thing three times. Only two of my eight have asked a stupid question about baked potatoes…at least as of this writing.
Fortunately, this is a list that I can tick off pretty quickly. Here are the favorite toppings at Hectic Manor:
- Shredded Cheese
- Sour Cream
- Butter
- Bacon Bits
- Ham Bits
- Cooked Broccoli
- Cooked Onions
- Sauteéd Onions
- Sauteéd Mushrooms
- Green Onions
If we’re trying to stretch the potatoes into more of an entree, serve them with chili, chicken, sausage, or ground beef. I’ve even been known to cook up some steak and cut it into thin strips as a topper.
Honestly, if it sounds like something you might like on top of your potato, give it a try. I would strongly recommend against fried diced liver. That was a pretty big failure at Hectic Manor some years ago. I’m not sure I’m ever going to live that one down!
What Do I Do With All These Leftover Baked Potatoes?
So you’ve got things figured out and you’re able to make baked potatoes quickly and effectively. Eventually you’re going to run into a situation where you have more baked potatoes than you can eat at one sitting. So what do you do with the left over fellas? First off, store them in the refrigerator. My preferred method is in zippered storage bags, but any closed container will work. Note that the crispy skins you worked so hard to achieve are going to turn soft in an enclosed container. Not to worry, you can use a shortened version of the microwave plus oven method to restore your potatoes and rebake them.
You can also make twice-baked potatoes by halving your refrigerated potatoes, scooping out their insides, and mixing them with whatever ingredients sound good from the toppings list or that you’ve come up with by looking in your refrigerator. Return the mixture to the scooped out shells and bake them until everything is hot and bubbly.
A slightly different twist is to scoop out the halved potatoes and bake the scooped out parts by themselves while you cook up the mashed innards and whatever you can scrape together. Then top the potato skins with the innards and call them Potato Skins or Twice Baked. I won’t tell if you interchange the naming!
You can also slice up the refrigerated potatoes and pan fry them in some oil and spices for a great batch of quick skillet potatoes.
If you need to store your potatoes for more than a few days you can freeze them whole, scooped out, or even shredded. The whole potatoes can be thawed and rebaked. The Scooped out potatoes can be thawed and turned into potato skins or twice baked potatoes. Finally, the shredded potatoes work great as hash browns.
You can also shred and dehydrate the potatoes. This is something that I learned while researching this post and I’ll be sure to test it and report back in my series on dehydration coming up shortly!
Wrap-Up
Remember, use Russet potatoes and don’t wrap them in foil when you’re baking them. We’re roasting here, not steaming! Give the various methods of prep a try. Some will work better than others for you, and some will fit your schedule better. There are tons of ways to take the lowly potato from a dirty spud just out of the ground to a delicious side (or even main) dish on your family’s dinner table. Have some fun with the process. Heck, you can even let the kids help clean the potatoes! Remember to take our your frustrations as you stab the potatoes during prep.
Most of all, make it a great day in the kitchen and roast away with those potatoes in their jackets!