You don’t need to be a culinary mastermind to upgrade your baked potato game. In fact,
following a few simple tips can help turn your sorry spuds into truly tantalizing taters.
Restaurant chefs understand that not all potatoes are good for baking. One thing
you need to pay attention to when prepping the perfect baked potato
is whether you're using a starchy, waxy, or all-purpose potato. While
waxy and all-purpose potatoes have their place in the cooking world, they're not
the best options when it comes to creating fluffy baked potatoes that customers crave.
"Potata? Yeah I can split a baked potata."
Instead, you'll want to choose a starchy spud with relatively little moisture inside.
Restaurants know that russet potatoes are the best choice for baked potatoes.
Russets have a high starch content, which helps to create the fluffy texture you
crave from a baked potato. Idaho potatoes are the second-best choice. Meanwhile,
all-purpose potatoes like purple and Yukon Gold varieties make a decent third choice.
Your best bet for getting the perfect baking potato is to shop for them individually,
rather than digging through a random bag hoping to find the perfect one. When you're looking
for the best possible potatoes to bake, you want smooth ones that don't have cuts or spots. Just
like fruit, potatoes can bruise. You may not be able to see internal bruising, but you can
see shatter bruising, which results in thick scar tissue on the surface and damage inside.
When a restaurant chef cuts open a potato and finds problems they couldn't see from the outside,
they simply trash it rather than serve a low-quality potato to their customers.
Other potatoes to avoid are soft ones, wrinkled ones, or those with eyes, sprouts, or green skin.
When you're baking multiple potatoes together, you'll surely want them to all get done at the
same time. Thus, it's essential to choose potatoes that are all roughly the same size.
If you've ever gone to your pantry for a potato only to discover that they've gone bad,
it's because you're not storing them properly.
"When you bring them home - unlike a boiling potato - you wanna make sure
you store them in a cool dry place and keep them away from moisture."
An ideal storing temperature is 43 to 50 degrees Fahrenheit - that's warmer than
your refrigerator should be but cooler than your pantry. Your basement or garage may stay
at an acceptable temperature for potatoes, depending on how they're built and what
time of the year it is. Otherwise, if you have access to a root cellar,
this is where you should be keeping your potatoes and other root vegetables.
According to Healthline, keeping your root veggies at cool temperatures will help them last longer,
prevent sprouting, and help them maintain more vitamin C over time. Meanwhile, keeping potatoes
in the dark will prevent them from turning green and increasing solanine levels. The more solanine
a potato has, the more toxic it becomes and the more likely it is to make you sick.
If you want to make baked potatoes that taste like a restaurant's, one secret is
to use salt to enhance both the texture and flavor. You can either brine your potato,
coat it in oil and salt, or even bake it on a bed of salt. Some chefs will soak their
potatoes in salt water for an hour or so before baking them. Guy Fieri soaks his for
an impressive six hours. Fieri sometimes goes a step further by rolling and encrusting his wet,
brined potatoes in even more salt and seasonings. We've found that, if you're low on time, you
will still get good results simply by soaking your potatoes in salty water while your oven preheats.
One of the most satisfying parts of eating a potato at a restaurant is
getting one with a crisp skin that contrasts perfectly with the fluffy,
starchy goodness inside. To accomplish this, add a coating of oil to the outside
of the potato and sprinkle salt on it before putting it into the oven.
If you don't want to use oil, salt is still your friend when it comes
to achieving crispy skins. All you need to do is bake your potatoes in a bed of salt. During
the baking process, any moisture the potato loses will escape into the salt
and then transfer back into the skin to help keep things from getting leathery.
You absolutely want to start your baked potato process by washing your potatoes to remove any
excess dirt, but you also don't want to put them in the oven soaking wet. It's fine if they're
coated with oil but you'll want to dry any water off thoroughly before popping them into the oven.
Don't worry about messing with the salt coating, either. If you gently pat the potatoes dry with
a paper towel or a dishcloth, salt will remain on the potato skin. If you're feeling dubious,
we invite you to stick the tip of your tongue to the potato to test it. It will still be
salty after a few gentle drying pats. Once you stick the potatoes in the oven, any residual
water will evaporate within a minute, leaving behind skin that looks slightly chalky with salt.
One thing restaurants never forget to do is poke holes in their potatoes. If you've ever had a
potato explode mid-baking, it's almost certainly because you forgot to pierce the skins. Sure, you
could continue baking after the potato effectively pokes a hole in itself via an explosion, but it's
not going to taste as good which will probably put a damper on whatever meal you're eating it for.
"Are you eating a baked potato?"
"Well it's cut in half so it's a lunch potato and a dinner potato."
Even low-moisture russet potatoes contain some level of moisture inside,
so it's essential to poke holes in your potatoes before you bake them, no matter the variety. As
the water inside the potato heats up, it turns to steam and needs somewhere to go.
If you poke a hole in the skin, the steam can escape without blowing apart the spud.
Since you're baking your potato and not steaming it, you'll want to avoid the foil. Yes,
we know that you've seen images of potatoes wrapped in foil all your life. However,
if you want restaurant-quality baked potatoes, you should leave the foil for the campfire.
If you think back to the last potato you cooked in foil, you'll likely remember that
the skins ended up soggy instead of crispy. The inside probably also had more of a dense boiled
potato texture rather than the fluffy baked potato interior you seek. While you may have
expected the foil to bake the potato faster or help crisp up the skin, all it does is create
a mini sauna. Inside the foil, any moisture the potato releases rains back down on the skin. So,
if you crave crispy rather than wet and soggy potato skins, be sure to leave off the foil.
While we're accustomed to checking our meat to determine its interior temperature,
we don't often think about doing the same for our potatoes. However,
if you want the perfect, pillowy restaurant-style baked potato,
the amount of time you cook them should actually be determined by your food thermometer. When it
reads between 205 and 212 degrees Fahrenheit after plunging into a potato, you know you've
cooked it to the perfect temperature for the softest, fluffiest texture possible.
We know you want your potatoes to make it from the oven to the table in as little time as possible.
However, don't let that be an excuse to mess with the oven temperature. If you start with
the temperature too high, you'll end up with burnt potatoes. However, you can usually bake
potatoes in under an hour if you set your oven to 450 degrees Fahrenheit for about 45 minutes.
Microwaving is certainly a faster way to bake potatoes, but the truth is that you're
never going to achieve restaurant-quality potatoes using your microwave. Instead,
you're likely to end up with an unevenly-cooked potato with an unsatisfactory texture.
So even if you're in a hurry to eat, it's best to be patient.
If you microwave your spud, you may end with some parts of it being at
the perfect temperature while other areas are still too cool to achieve
the correct texture. That's especially true if you're microwaving a super-sized spud.
The other problem with microwaving is that the heating process inside a microwave is
too rapid. When you heat your potato quickly in the microwave rather than slowly in the oven,
the cells inside the potato rupture from an increase in internal pressure. The starch inside
the potato will attempt to glue the broken cells back together and this results in a gummy potato.
You may have noticed that you practically never get a baked potato from a good
restaurant that isn't already split open for you. The chef isn't just being nice. Rather,
opening up a cooked potato is an essential part of the baking
process. If you don't split it open after you take it out of the oven,
you may end up with a potato that is hard and gluey inside rather than soft and pillowy.
The earlier you split open the skin the better. That's because your piping-hot
spud needs somewhere to vent all the steam that has accumulated during the baking process. Even
if you've poked holes in the skin before cooking, there simply isn't enough space inside the potato
to accommodate all the excess moisture. When it can't escape, it sticks around and ruins
the texture. Even waiting 10 minutes to cut it open will alter the texture, so don't waste time.
Restaurants usually bake their potatoes ahead of time to make sure they come out of the
oven quickly. Otherwise, your meal couldn't come out of the kitchen in under 45 minutes.
Once a chef bakes potatoes, they either warm them up again or keep the spuds in a warmer.
If a restaurant keeps its baked potatoes on a warmer,
chefs must be sure that they put fresh potatoes on to bake regularly
to accommodate the expected number of diners. If they do their math right,
they'll always have enough in their warmer for guests until the next round gets out of the oven.
If you make your potatoes ahead of all your other dishes, try dropping the oven down to 200 degrees
Fahrenheit and keeping them warm there. If you're baking something else in the oven,
pop them into the warming drawer beneath your oven. Yes, we know you probably have it full of
baking trays, but it's technically built to keep your food warm. Another option is to use the "keep
warm" setting of your slow cooker or instant pot, and an insulated cooler works as well.
Chances are that the last time you ordered a baked potato in a restaurant,
they served it with real butter. Unless you're lactose intolerant or vegan,
you'll have a better baked potato experience with real butter than
margarine. We find its rich dairy flavor is far superior to artificial butter flavor.
To be called margarine, the ingredients in your butter substitute must be 80%
fat at a bare minimum, so you're still consuming fat if you choose this route.
You may find a butter substitute with less fat if you choose one
labeled as "spread." If you're watching your cholesterol, you'll find that butter could
be more heart-healthy than some margarine brands that may contain trans fats. Plus,
a quick look at margarine ingredients will show you just how many chemicals
you're consuming in comparison to butter, which usually only contains cream and possibly salt.
Eating a baked potato with nothing but butter and salt is fine, but most
restaurants go a step further and offer loaded baked potatoes. When you serve your spuds at home,
why not offer plenty of other toppings as well? If you plan ahead, for instance,
you can cook bacon to crumble over the top. Even if you're short on time, you can probably
find plenty of toppings to serve alongside your baked potatoes if you raid the fridge.
Shredded cheese, sour cream, and ranch dressing are obvious options that may
already be waiting for you. Chopped chives are likewise easy to prepare. Also, consider
fresh and canned options like olives, diced bell peppers, tomatoes, and even pickled jalapeños.
You can even check to see what leftovers you have that may play well atop a baked potato.