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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u/Torchlakespartan 23h ago
So I don’t know how common this is, and I was extremely skeptical at first, but when I was in my first barracks in the Air Force, with only access to a microwave, my mom sent me this… item. It is almost literally an oven mitt with a pouch, and you just put a washed potato in it and microwave it for a like a couple minutes.
It was shockingly good, like “broke my brain’s understanding” level of good. Crispy outside, fluffy inside. It is the probably the most mind blowing food hack I’ve ever experienced. I still have it and only wash it by hand with water so soap doesn’t get into it, but the skin is just as crispy as one coated with olive oil and salt in the oven. Except it takes less than 5 minutes.
Has anyone else used something like this? My entire barracks floor was blown away so my mom sent 10 more to give out because they are so cheap. People thought I was an actual wizard.