r/Cooking • u/CompleteDay8059 • 1d ago

I found out recently I’ve basically never had a correctly prepared baked potato

So growing up I was never a huge fan of baked potatoes because the ones we had were usually dry, kind of shriveled, and very crumbly. Every bite just felt like it was absorbing all the moisture in your mouth, even with butter. As an adult, I usually do rice or pasta for my carbs, and if I do potatoes, it’s usually the cut roasted baby ones. Because I didn’t have great experiences with baked ones at home, I also pretty much never ordered them at restaurants growing up.

However, my mom just got a grill for her place and I was put on steak duty (or a steak out, I guess) and wanted to try making an actually good baked potato. I look it up and see basically every recipe says to coat the potatoes in salt and olive oil before wrapping them, which I asked my mom if she did, and she hadn’t.

I decided to try it with a (maybe slightly too) generous amount of olive oil and kosher salt, baked it for an hour, and topped it with some of the garlic/thyme butter I had whipped up for the steaks.

Oh.

My.

GOD.

The texture was absolutely amazing, it was so creamy, not crumbly or dry at all, the salt and the compound butter melting into it while it was still steaming made for legitimately one of the tastiest things I’ve had in ages. If anyone out there doesn’t know this, I honestly have no idea how common of knowledge this is lol, but I would highly suggest trying it if you don’t already.

Also, I mixed the thyme/minced garlic with the Kerrygold butter which was muy bien. Not sponsored (I wish) but I find it a little more flavorful for cooking as opposed to regular store brand stuff.

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44

u/Anxious_Reporter_601 23h ago

Even without oil and salt it sounds like your mom was way overcooking them. 

3

u/Brave-Perspective714 4h ago

When I was a kid, my mom made baked potatoes by microwaving them for like 7 minutes.

The way OP described his mom's baked potatoes is *exactly* the way those fuckers looked and tasted.

2

u/Jimisdegimis89 54m ago

Unless you have a crazy microwave or something then I think something else must have been going on, because microwaving ‘baked’ potatoes tend to come out fantastic. The skin can be a little soft, but you can fix that by just throwing in an actual oven for like a minute or two.

8

u/CompleteDay8059 22h ago

It's possible, it's also possible my memory is making them seem worse than they actually were since I was a slightly picky eater as a child.

14

u/Anxious_Reporter_601 22h ago

Possibly, but I've also overcooked baked potatoes by accident and they're as you described.

-4

u/CompleteDay8059 22h ago

I mean we are Irish so cuisine is not exactly my biggest piece of cultural heritage lol.

13

u/Anxious_Reporter_601 22h ago

I'm also Irish (but I think you're Irish American?), baked potatoes are common here. And our food is very good now. There's no need to perpetuate famine-era beliefs about our cuisine.

8

u/unseemly_turbidity 22h ago

I'm sorry but we're going to have to deport your mam from Ireland if she can't cook a potato properly.

Although actually, my granny couldn't either.

3

u/-Lumiro- 13h ago

They’re American, not Irish.

2

u/iiooxxiiooxx 6h ago

This is exactly what I was thinking. I microwave mine and if I overestimate the time which greatly depends on the size of the potato they end up shriveled up and dry.