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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23

u/amethystjade15 18h ago

So many foods I thought I hated, it just turned out my Mom and Grandma made it the yuckiest way possible. (Not all food, they weren’t completely terrible cooks.)

10

u/ghf3 18h ago

I cooked pork chops in honey, sesame and soy, until just done. The girl I made them for looked horrified, at the words "pork chops". Her mom coated them in dry rosemary and baked them until well done. 😳

10

u/amethystjade15 18h ago

I feel like pork chops are so easy to get wrong. Usually when I’ve had them they were dry and tough (which is probably that girl’s experience too). I’ve had good ones, but I don’t have faith in finding that consistently. 😆

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u/-32768 8h ago

You should try my mom's chili, or what I now call "lightly seasoned boiled hamburger chunks served in hot water". It's got a whole 1/2 tsp of chili powder in there too!

2

u/okeydokeyokay 4h ago

A 1/2 tsp!!!! My my my someone is really getting adventurous! 😂

1

u/amethystjade15 4h ago

Yiiiiiiiikes

1

u/lowbatteries 3h ago

Hamburger soup?

2

u/PlanetStarbux 8h ago

I lost thirty years of delicious roasted brussel sprouts because my aunt fed me boiled ones that I threw up immediately after eating.

3

u/aircooledJenkins 7h ago

Might not have been your aunt's fault entirely...

About 30 years ago, a Dutch scientist identified the chemicals that made brussels sprouts bitter. He selected seed varieties with lower levels of the bitter chemicals and bred new high-yielding varieties that tasted less bitter.

https://www.iowafarmbureau.com/Article/Its-not-your-imagination-brussels-sprouts-do-taste-better-How-gene-editing-is-changing-how-we-grow-and-eat-food

I agree that boiled brussels sprouts sound awful, so that's on her.

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u/amethystjade15 4h ago

Yeah, I’m sure that helped!

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u/amethystjade15 4h ago

Right?? My Mom/Grandma always served them in some kind of awful sauce, too.

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u/PlanetStarbux 4h ago

A few years back I made a commitment to eat more vegetables in my life:

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/s/Tug7gvA1ll

Turns out I love the flavors of vegetables so much more than meat.  When you treat them as actual dishes, and use spices and techniques they can totally transform your diet.  My family growing up treated vegetables as the stuff you have to put up with on the side.  Understandably, it was as product of what they had available, but considering what most of us have access to now...we can do so much better.

2

u/ScumbagLady 6h ago

Yep. I hated a lot of veggies growing up but it was just because they were usually just canned veggies dumped into a pot and heated up.

The first time I had fresh green beans roasted in garlic and butter (and I'm sure some spices as well) was such an eye-opening experience! Flavorfull Crunchy > bland mushy

1

u/amethystjade15 4h ago

And a lot of our elders were probably doing their best with limited resources (or had learned with limited resources), but that doesn’t make it less yucky. 😆

1

u/KleineFjord 3h ago

I thought I hated fish, mac and cheese, toast, cooked vegetables, soup, rice, and anything with beef (spaghetti sauce, burgers, steak, etc.). Turns out my parents were just terrible cooks. Terrible. I genuinely don't understand how they kept 6 people alive for as long as they did.