Stovetop Potato Baker

[stefanyb]

I was just thinking that today's baked potato never tastes as good to me as the ones my mother used to "bake" on the stove.

These pans were black metal with a wooden handle and shallow with, I think, holes in the bottom. They had high dome tops and "baked" a potato with the crispiest skin you can ever imagine. The inside was light and fluffy and delicious.

Anyone remember?

[Suzanne F]

Oh my g-d, YES! In fact, I was just talking about them with hubby Paul a couple of days ago! As I recall, the bottom part was sort of a squashed cylinder, the diameter of a stove burner and not more than 1/2" high. The bottom of it was solid, and the top had concentric circles of holes. The cover was a high dome. They were wonderful. So simple even Paul could make baked potatoes as a kid I think I had one in 1968, living on my own while on co-op from college, with just a 2-burner hotplate and a rotiserrie-broiler to cook with. I forget what happened to that one, and to my mother's.

They did, in fact, cook perfect potatoes. I wonder if someplace like Vermont Country Store still carries them? Thanks for continuing the memory.

[Jinmyo]

Wow. No, I don't. I'm interested though.

Suzanne, please post what you find out.

[snowangel]

I know that when each of my grandmothers died and we cleaned out their houses, they each had one. My sister got one, my cousin got the other. I think it was called a "tater baker."

I just love the crispy skin, and don't really mind when my kids don't like them. I just scoop the insides out for them, put a nice big slab of butter into a crispy skin half, and devour (almost need a bib). It's the best part of the potato!

I've had the best luck recreating by starting them in the microwave, then putting them in the toaster oven on highest possible setting until done and crispy. The insides are still fluffy.

[Jinmyo]

I'm for par-boiling (in salted water with garlic cloves and pepper corns) then slathering with whatever lipid is at hand (duck fat preferably, chicken fat after that, butter and peppery EVOO mixture after that) and roasting at 450 for an hour or so.

But the contraption sounds interesting.

[Varmint]

I just did a google search for "potato baker," and, voila

This is an el cheapo version for less than 10 bucks at http://www.dreamproductscatalog.com/detail...ls.cfm?item=215

[Jinmyo]

Oh. What's the point of that? (Thanks for finding it, though.) Why not just use the oven?

And I know I do 20 to 40 pounds of potatoes at a time. But 3? I could eat 3.

ediot full discloure:

"At" does not contain a "zed".

Edited December 5, 2002 by Jinmyo (log)

[Suzanne F]

That's it! although you could definitely fit 4 potatoes in mine and my mother's.

The point is that you don't have to heat up the whole oven (= use a lot of fuel) when the only thing you need it for is potatoes. Remember, these come from a long-ago era (maybe even as far back as the 1800s?). Probably in those days, if you had to bake that many potatoes at home, you'd take them to the bread baker to borrow his oven. Or if you were doing them for a restaurant, you had a lot more going into the oven than just potatoes.

Or was that question ("What's the point of that?") another joke?

[Jinmyo]

The point, the nib, the jist (if you will) under present question is...

it's just a non-stick thin thing instead of the sturdy vented and cursively-capped or some such monster cast in iron that startled my imagination into new paths, now so cruelly blockaded and stopped off at the throat by the pale image of yon non-stick thinnyness of aforementioned thing.

And also:

4 potatoes.

Just

4?

Further, m'lords and ladies.

Had they non-stick thin things in the 1880s? I say to this nay, a thousand (more or less) times nay.

Surely, surely, surely Shirley--I mean, Suzanne--this cannot be what these crisp yet fluffy dreams fall down to and expire as.

Surely, surely...

/death throes, exeunt stage left

[Toby]

My mother still uses one of those. I just saw one in the Bridge kitchen supply store a few weeks ago (I think it was there, or else it was in Broadway Panhandler -- it was on a high shelf in a corner, and looked very sturdy).

[Human Bean]

And I know I do 20 to 40 pounds of potatoes at a time. But 3? I could eat 3.