How to achieve the perfect baked potato

I am reliably informed that today is National Potato Day*, and so I thought I’d mark the occasion by shouting all about how to make the perfect jacket potato.

Some crazy, crazy people just whack them in the microwave for 10 minutes.

Wrong! That is not a baked potato, that is a zapped and fairly tasteless potato. It really does no justice to the awesomeness of the real, proper thing.

So if you really like proper, tasteful potatoes here is what to do:

1. Preheat your oven to 220 degrees.
2. Get a nice big baking potato, pour oil on your hands and then roll the potato in it.
3. Sprinkle the potato in coarse sea salt.
4. Stab it with a fork.
5. Check the oven has reached the required temperature, then stick the potato in for 45 minutes, directly on to the oven shelf.
6. Remove the potato with oven gloves, and put it on a stable surface.
7. Place a teatowel over the potato.
8. KARATE CHOP the potato!
9. Drop a bit of proper butter into the bashed open potato parts.
10. Top with whatever you like on potatoes. (Oh, and probably put it on a plate or in a bowl too…)
11. Grab a knife and fork, sit back and savour the flavour and fluffiness. Perfect!

Notes: Yes I am serious. Karate chop it! If you do this, the texture of the potato will be fluffy, light and moist as the quick release of the steam from inside the skin works magic. Using a knife does not achieve anywhere near the same effect.

Also, do not karate chop the potato without putting a teatowel over it first. You will end up with molten potato firmly attached to your burnt and reddened hand. This is a lesson I have learnt and never forgotten…

 

*if I am wrong, please blame GenuinePlacebo and Plasticrosaries, although, to be honest I think it’s important to share the potato love, anyway.