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Baked Potatoes
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- Total Time
- 1 hour
- Rating
- Notes
- Read community notes
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Ingredients
- 4large baking potatoes, like russets
- 1teaspoon olive oil
- Kosher salt
- 4tablespoons unsalted butter
Preparation
- Step 1
Preheat oven to 450.
- Step 2
Scrub potatoes under running water; dry them, and rub the skin of each with the oil and a little salt. Pierce the skin of each in three or four places with the tines of a fork.
- Step 3
Place the potatoes in the oven, and roast for 45 minutes to an hour, depending on the size of the potatoes, until they offer no resistance when a knife is inserted in their centers.
- Step 4
Remove the potatoes from the oven, slice them open down the middle, apply a tablespoon of butter to each one and serve immediately.
Private Notes
Cooking Notes
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.
I so love these kinds of recipes, really I do. I know so many people have come to think that food is something that requires hours of work, very specific, very special ingredients and tools for preparing.
And then I think of my Mom, a Depression era cook who would pull out enough evenly sized potatoes from the root cellar stash, scrub them and cut out an eye or spot and tuck them into the oven. When they were done, they were served up, crispy skins and all, with butter, salt and pepper. Fini.
Marion: keeping heat out of the kitchen is why God blessed us with toaster ovens. In summer you can schlep it out to the patio and bake potatoes with zero heat injected into the kitchen.
Users of the microwave/conventional oven hybrid approach: this works, but it's hard to judge when they're done. Employ a digital probe thermometer. 110 deg. internal temp is perfect. This also helps get conventionally-baked potatoes right. Many home ovens' thermostats are inaccurate.
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.
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.
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.
with spinach, chives,cheese and cream ...
Also if you pre-cook the potatoes for a few minutes in the microwave for 2 or 3 minutes cooking time is less - but prick them first
I’ve always baked Russet potatoes, the traditional variety and one recommended in most recipes. Then I tried Yukon Gold and am now a convert! Baked the traditional way, with olive oil and salt on the skins, they produce a fluffy, buttery interior and a nice, crisp, tasty skin. I will never go back!
This is the way I have done it for decades. The only thing I do differently is I don’t slice the top with a knife when done. I “fork” the top of the potato linearly, then gently push the ends of the potato towards the center. You get a better presentation than with a knife. This I learned while working in a high end steakhouse in my college years.
I would recommend putting the potatoes on a baking tray, otherwise you get smoke from the olive oil dripping down onto the base of the oven. thats no fun!
I hear my Mom and Grandma nag when I don't have vegetables with a meal. And I don't really like broccoli that much, but it's supposed to be good for you. So when the potato IS the meal, my mashup to eat guilt free is to burst the done potato open (DON'T cut with a knife!), Liberally add salt and pepper and fork it around in the pulp, Add 3 tsp-size pats of butter, and then all the broccoli you can stand. Then cover the whole mess with warmed queso dip -- kills the stinky broccoli and blandness.
This is the first baked-potato recipe I've seen that calls for baking at a higher temperature than 350F, aside from James Beard's battered cookbook that I've used as a cooking bible for over 30 years (Beard suggests 425F, which is what the russets in the oven are currently baking at). I'm very glad to see that someone other than Beard is a fan of the higher temperature...the difference between 350- & 425-baked potatoes is night & day!
In the hot summers, a good toaster oven is a boon to home cooks. It got me through many years of steamy, hot New York City summers. I got pretty accomplished with adapting to the toaster oven's smaller size. Turning on a regular oven fought water-cooled air conditioners in New York City co-ops. That's where toaster ovens came in. We didn't have multi-cookers, and rice cookers and slow cookers lacked the sophistication of their modern counter-parts. The best one could do was use the toaster oven.
Good olive oil and a bit of Maldon salt. That's all you need.
Used Yukon Golds, placed in large bowl, drizzled with oil and some sea salt and tossed to coat. Pierced and placed directly on oven rack. They came out fluffy and soft at the same time. Absolutely perfect. Thank you Sam!
Yummy with sour cream
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.
I've been at it almost as long. And actually getting a fork any real distance is very difficult, so I typically let it cook for a little while first. I've had exactly one tater explosion -- when I stuck the fork in it.
Pedantic Twit: You need only pierce the skin... no need to get "any real distance."
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.
As in Step 2 of the recipe?
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