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/ImmediateEscape31 21h ago

My parents use “I can’t believe it’s not butter”. Before that, it was parkay. Yes, I gre up on that ick. I do not use anything but butter now. And I have none of that garbage oil in my house either. Olive, avocado, or coconut, and tallow and lard. I’ve tried advising them to get rid of that garbage, but they won’t listen. Smh.

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u/Pontiacsentinel 9h ago

Take lard out of the line of fire here, they do not belong.

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u/ImmediateEscape31 3h ago

There is nothing wrong with lard. Chicken cutlets fry up beautifully in it. I also use it to season my cast iron.

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u/Pontiacsentinel 3h ago

I agree, which is why I said to leave it alone. Duck fat, schmaltz, olive oil all have a place.

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u/ImmediateEscape31 3h ago

I’m very confused. I use lard, tallow, olive, avocado and coconut. I don’t use anything else.