Better Home Cooking Basics: #58 To Quick Bake a Potato Use a Combo of a Microwave & a Hot Oven.

Ever make a baked potato & it feel like it take hours to bake? It’s probably because it does, but who has time to bake a potato for hours especially on a ‘school night’? Not this girl that’s for sure. After much trial & error & potato soul searching on the web I’ve harvested the best tips for ‘quick baking’ a potato - & by ‘quick’ I’m talking more like 30 minutes than 3 hours so that is ‘quick’ to me. Using a combo of your microwave & a super hot oven you too can make baked potatoes on school nights!

Here’s how you quick bake a potato:

1. Wash & dry potatoes.
2. Pre-heat your oven to 450.
3. Using a fork prick small holes all around the potatoes.
4. Microwave the potatoes for 8 minutes total, flipping them half way through. If your potato is closer to 1 pound I would do this step twice as long, but for regular sized russet potatoes 8 minutes will do.
5. Rub the outsides of the potatoes with a bit of olive oil.
6. Wrap each potato individually in foil.
7. Bake for 20-25 minutes.
8. I like to pick my potatoes up with a pot holder & give them a squeeze to see if they’re finished cooking. If they are they’ll be really soft & almost mush, if they’re not they’ll be hard & I put them back in the oven for 5 minutes at a time. You can also stick a fork in them to see if they’re done.

Get more of my better home cooking basics here.