Baked Potatoes Recipe (2024)

Cranking the oven up to 450 in the summer (or any season, actually) for an hour to bake a potato is nuts. Prick your potatoes, rub them with olive oil, salt and pepper (and whatever other herbs/spices strike your fancy) and nuke them for 5 minutes. After 5 minutes turn them over and nuke for another 5 minutes. THEN pop them into a 400 to 450 oven for 10 or 15 minutes to crisp up the skin. Perfect potatoes every time.

As my Oklahoma grandmother taught me, I rub the skins with bacon grease and salt. Give it a try.

Can't think of anything simpler for a week day meal than the perfectly baked potatoes this recipe delivers. Love the warm oven on a cool evening and the aroma of the potatoes baking. The time they take is just enough time to change clothes and sip a glass of wine while chopping or prepping whatever it is you'll use for topping. Only change for me from recipe is I make a little "X" in middle then push from both ends to open it up for maximum fluffy goodness.

I'm for nuking when in a hurry but oven roasted is far better to produce a crunchy skin which I love to eat as well as the flesh of the potato. NEVER wrap in foil when oven roasting, the potato will steam, have soggy skin. Not always do I rub oil over the potato, I'm not sure it's absolutely necessary.

Here's how we like them: Prick all over with fork. Rub all over with small amount of olive oil. Roll in a plate of kosher salt. Bake at 425 in toaster oven or regular oven, directly on the rack, not in foil, for about an hour. Check with fork for inside doneness. Cut an x with a small knife on top of each one. Holding with oven mitts or towels, squish sides together. Skins are nice and crunchy and insides are soft. Top with sour cream and chopped scallions or chives.

When baking in a conventional or toaster oven, I place a metal skewer through the long ends of the potato, which is supposed to make it cook more evenly. As far as rubbing the skin with some oil and salt: while the oil helps prevent the skin from becoming too dry, the salt helps pull the moisture out of the potato and makes it a little fluffier. A side benefit is the skin is tastier if you want to eat it.

If you wrap the potato in foil, then bake it, the best adjustment is to feed it to the chickens. Maybe they will eat it. The potato, not the foil.

The best baking potatoes are Idaho Russet Burbank variety. The variety is on consumer packs as well as cartons made for foodservice distribution. The Burbank vaiety are typically shipped beginning in late September and are available till late August.

Anchovy butter with chives makes a delightful topping.
OR
a teaspoon of butter plus one anchovy filet as a topping.

It's just 1/4 tsp of oil rubbed on each potato. It will not make a mess in the oven and wrapping in foil would allow them to steam, not bake.

The best thing you can do with a potato after it's baked is to cut it in half then score the soft flesh in each half, then generously salt it, then add butter, close it back up to melt the butter, then lay flat again. The butter will run down into all the scored lines of the potato and take the salt down with it, vastly enhancing and bringing out the potato's flavor.

I like to make them the Turkish way, kumpir. After baking, scoop lots of the potato out of its skin, mash it up with cheese, veggies, etc., anything really, then put back in the skin with toppings on top. A meal in itself.

A tablespoon of butter. … I’m still chuckling over that one.

The only thing I remember from high school biology class - in which we tested various foods for their composition - is that the skin is the only protein-rich part of the potato. It’s also delicious. Eat the skin!

Always prick stab your potatoes. Do not believe any recipe that omits this step. Over seventy years experience baking potatoes has unforgettably taught me unpricked potatoes can explode, stick and burn all over the oven. Even once after cleaning up, you’d want to share this warning too.

Internal temperature 210

My potatoes were a bit small. Baked at 435 degrees for about 45 minutes. Rubbed with citrus salt mix. Delicious!

Olive, or most any, oil rubbed over the skin of the potato is a must for the perfect crunchy skin.

A fun version of this is to "Jacket" the potatoes. Do as noted above, but before putting in the oven, rub good quality EVO on the outside of each potato, and cut a small cross shape in the top (1 inch long in the skin) to permit steam to escape. When they come out of the oven, the skin will have a nice crisp to it. Quite good.

The trick I use is an instant read thermometer. When the potato hits 205F / 96C in the inside, it's done. I second the suggestion elsewhere about bacon grease and salt on the outside, but oil works fine too.

Poke 3 times with a fork. 5 minutes in the microwave, then pop in the toaster oven for as long as you need. You’re welcome.

Air fry them now for 45 minutes. Rub them with olive oil and kosher salt. Awesome crispy!

I grew up making 'baked" potatoes in the microwave, and was bowled over when I first tried actually baking them according to this recipe. The skin is crisp and salty, while the inside is fluffy and perfectly cooked. Takes 5 minutes to prep, so i don't mind the 45 minutes in the oven. I can get some other chores done while they bake, and the heat from the oven adds warmth to the house in the middle of midwestern winter.

Very tasty, nuked first and then finished in oven to get the wrinkly / starting to separate skin stage. Oil makes a glossy skin. It was a little too salty but not too much salt on a meal consisting of two small potatoes roughly mashed with toppings of choice,

The aioli dressing from the Kenji Alt-Lopez recipe for fried shallot Ceaser Salad is wonderful on these baked potatoes. And if you make the salad, you’ll have lots of leftover aioli for other uses. Like adorning these spuds.

I had forgotten how good OVEN baked potatoes are. Probably hadn't had one since I was a kid. Microwave if you're pressed for time, but planning ahead for this deliciousness is well worth it.

So simple. So good. We had one baked potato left over and it reheat in the oven nicely!