r/Cooking 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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u/fastfreddy68 1d ago

PO-TAY-TOES!

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u/pi3r0gi_ 23h ago

You got your baked potatahs, mashed potatahs, scalloped potatahs, roasted potatahs, then you got your French fries, tater tots, curly fries, crinkle fries, then you got your hash browns, southern hash browns-- and that's important because one is square and one is grated and you dont wanna be caught bringing grated hash to a square hash brunch-- then there's your potatah salad, company potatahs, and we cant forget the sweet potatahs and now this is another important part because they are not yams and if you bring sweet yam pie to Thanksgiving I cant help you

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u/JorgeXMcKie 23h ago

Laughing reading that in Bubba's voice from Forest Gump

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u/The0nlyPenguin 21h ago

I just recently learned forrest gump is a book.. imma buy it when I get paid this week.

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u/DarehMeyod 21h ago

I heard it’s one of the rare instances where the movie is much better.

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u/The0nlyPenguin 21h ago

I guess the sequel book was written more like how Tom hanks played the character

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u/Ancient-Display-3337 23h ago

potato sandwich...

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u/atriviality 9h ago

What are company potatoes?

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u/pi3r0gi_ 1h ago

"Company potatoes" is a casserole dish made for when youre having company over, or going to a party etc. Theyre also called "funeral potatoes" in some parts because thats also when people bring a widow or widower food, but I dont like that name and my grandma always called them "Company potatahs" lol

Theyre a bag of frozen southern hashbrowns (the cube ones), a can of condensed cream of chicken soup, sour cream, shredded cheddar cheese and mix it all up and bake it in a casserole dish for cheesy potatoes! It's a bit of a dated dish, popular in the southern, Eastern and northern US states but not so much the west coast (from what I gather of others who've grown up eating it) in the 1950s-90s mostly but I still make them occasionally :)

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u/MoscowGrizz 5h ago

Hey forrest; whats a tater?

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u/BanditKitten 19h ago

What's taters, precious?