If you don't prick holes in a potato before baking...

[gfweb]

I have never pricked baked potatoes. No recorded explosions. 

 

I do massage them with peanut oil. I think its more for me than them. 

[Katie Meadow]

I don't bake russets, but once a year I stab the living daylights out of a bunch of yams. It's my way of coming to terms with the fact that only about three people out of a crowded tableful even eat them. One of those three is my husband, who would consider it a crime if they didn't make an appearance. The worst part of it was the fight for oven space. Now many of my husband's family are scattered to the winds and, thank the gods, the group is becoming more intimate and less chaotic. Speaking of Thanksgiving, which isn't really the topic of this thread at all, I hear that fresh turkeys have doubled in price as a result of avian flu. How many more pandemics are gunning for the holiday? My husband says that if a fresh farm turkey costs more than $150 this year he might think twice. Needless to say, our Thanksgiving has always been three turkey eaters and a blizzard of vegetarians. Strangely the turkey eaters are the same three people who eat the yams. 

[liuzhou]

I stab my spuds with this. It is sprung so that the spikes retract safely for storage. One  stab - 24 holes.

 

 

 

[Katie Meadow]

1 hour ago, liuzhou said:

I stab my spuds with this. It is sprung so that the spikes retract safely for storage. One  stab - 24 holes.

 

 

 

Where did you ever get such a thing? And does it have a name? Just curious. I really don't want one.

[liuzhou]

53 minutes ago, Katie Meadow said:

Where did you ever get such a thing? And does it have a name? Just curious. I really don't want one.

 

I bought it here in China. It's a meat tenderiser tool. Available from Walmart etc. See here.

 

[Duvel]

3 hours ago, liuzhou said:

stab my spuds with this.

Are you baking your potatoes ?

[liuzhou]

1 hour ago, Duvel said:

Are you baking your potatoes ?

 

er, yes. sometimes.

[TdeV]

8 hours ago, JoNorvelleWalker said:

I'm baking tonight's potato as we speak.  I rub my potatoes with grapeseed oil and bake 425F for two hours in a bed of salt.  However since I've been assured an asteroid will subsume the planet unless I properly prick my russets I have been stabbing mine to assay the difference.

 

I find nothing wrong with prestabbing the poor potatoes but no benefit is added.  Either way my salt baked potatoes end up dry and fluffy.

 

Do you reuse the salt, Jo?

[JoNorvelleWalker]

7 hours ago, TdeV said:

 

Do you reuse the salt, Jo?

 

Yes.

 

[SusieQ]

I do what my Mom did, which is to wrap the potatoes in foil. I suppose that makes a baked potato that would be frowned upon by you potato-prickers. 😆

[FauxPas]

2 hours ago, SusieQ said:

I do what my Mom did, which is to wrap the potatoes in foil. I suppose that makes a baked potato that would be frowned upon by you potato-prickers. 😆

 

I do both. I stab them and then I smother them in foil. I want to make sure they're dead before I bake them, maybe?  😄

[farcego]

2 hours ago, SusieQ said:

I do what my Mom did, which is to wrap the potatoes in foil. I suppose that makes a baked potato that would be frowned upon by you potato-prickers. 😆

I sometimes do them as you do, but I have never stab them, and never had an issue.

[IndyRob]

I used to do a lot of weird things to potatoes.  And then I thought about cooking them.

 

No, seriously, I did the salt, I did the foil, and the oil.

 

All you have to do is stab the suckers deeply with a fork four times and throw 'em in a 425 oven for 45 to 70 minutes (depending on size).

 

The little chimneys you made will provide a pathway for the water to get out.  And that's what you want.  And that's all you need.

[Marlene]

18 hours ago, liuzhou said:

I stab my spuds with this. It is sprung so that the spikes retract safely for storage. One  stab - 24 holes.

 

 

 

I have potato stabber envy.  I prick my potatoes before baking. Every time I forget, they explode and cleaning that up from the oven is never fun.  I usually rub them in olive oil coat with salt and bake at 400 for an hour a  bit .  I don't wrap them in foil because for me the best part is the crispy potato skin

 

[Margaret Pilgrim]

Stab several times with a paring knife, then massage with butter.    DH doesn't eat the skins, but I DO!

[FauxPas]

22 hours ago, Katie Meadow said:

I don't bake russets, but once a year I stab the living daylights out of a bunch of yams. It's my way of coming to terms with the fact that only about three people out of a crowded tableful even eat them. One of those three is my husband, who would consider it a crime if they didn't make an appearance.

 

Do you get real yams in SF area? We used to see sweet potatoes wrongly labeled as yams, but I think now they are a little more careful/accurate about it. I think we used to get both at times, but now I mostly just see sweet potatoes. Which is fine with me, because I love them! But when I cook them after several stabs, the liquid from them tends to run all over and sometimes I just wrap them in foil, to keep things a bit tidier. Do yams behave the same way? 

Edited October 24, 2022 by FauxPas (log)

[Katie Meadow]

2 hours ago, FauxPas said:

 

Do you get real yams in SF area? We used to see sweet potatoes wrongly labeled as yams, but I think now they are a little more careful/accurate about it. I think we used to get both at times, but now I mostly just see sweet potatoes. Which is fine with me, because I love the. m! But when I cook them after several stabs, the liquid from them tends to run all over and sometimes I just wrap them in foil, to keep things a bit tidier. Do yams behave the same way? 

No, we do not. You are correct that technically all the things labeled yams are in fact an orange variety of sweet potato, to distinguish them from the less sweet white fleshed sweet potato.  Real yams are indeed a different animal and rarely seen in markets in the US. If you want to make a sweet potato pie you learn to buy the orange fleshed sweet potato labeled as yams. The clue is they have a redder skin and the varieties are typically Garnet, Jewel or Beauregard. Around here in Northern CA the Beauregards don't show up often but they are really good. Maybe they are grown more in the south?

 

I just stab them and bake loose on a cookie sheet lined with foil. Yes they do seep a little but not enough to make a difference as far as I can tell.

Edited October 24, 2022 by Katie Meadow (log)

[liuzhou]

5 hours ago, Marlene said:

I usually rub them in olive oil coat with salt and bake at 400 for an hour a  bit .

 

Pretty much what I do but I don't do 400. I'm metric.

Edited October 24, 2022 by liuzhou (log)

[Arey]

I always prick potatoes before baking.  An exploded potato can make a real mess in an oven . If the pricks don't go deep enough  the potato might  explode any way. I  use a fork now  but originally I used a mattress needle which I also used for trussing a chicken. It was very strong, and if the potato was small enough, it could  go clear through the potato, which is how I learned to not hold the potato in my hand while pricking it. 

 

[gfweb]

9 hours ago, liuzhou said:

 

Pretty much what I do but I don't do 400. I'm metric.

They taste better in F than C

[rotuts]

Ive had one explosion in a standard 30 " oven

 

it is a bit of a mess to clean up.   

 

and one in a micro.

 

so I use a fork.  easy to do , and no more explosions .

 

I do 425 F  in a CSO on regular bake.

 

u til the skins are very cracky and crunchy.

 

I try to get smaller idaho's  , as its about the crispy skin

 

and fluffy insides.

 

the 2 hour times much have been for Presentation Idaho's

 

the ones you buy individually @ 2 - 3 x the price of the ones in a bag.

[Anna N]

1 hour ago, rotuts said:

the 2 hour times much have been for Presentation Idaho's

Strangely, few of the recipes that I was able to access even mentioned size. 
For instance Click 1

Delia’s recipe does use the very large 8 to 12 ounce ones  Click 2

Another example of no size given but they do look raw the smaller to me Click 3

 

[rotuts]

I pick Russets from Idaho

 

not the brand name , 

 

that invented what should have gotten

 

the NobelPrizeforFood :  the TaterTot

 

some time ago now , a volcano erupted 

 

in the Washington state area , or the likes 

 

and the ash was very significant , and 

 

much of it deposited in Idaho.  

 

not in anyway a trivial matter.

 

thus , the soil improved , and generic Idaho russets 

 

if what I look for , for that sort of potato.

[Bernie]

I found this https://buythermopro.com/knowledge/potato-internal-temperature/

 What this basically says is that a potato is cooked when its internal temperature reaches 98C.

But here is the kicker. How do you make a baked potato reach 98C? You put it in an oven at 98C and wait till it reaches that temperature in say 48hrs. But you would have a desiccated cardboard potato.☹️

So put it in water and boil it, but that is not roasting.🙄

So put it in an oven at 120C and wait for likely several hours for the internal temperature to reach 98c....leather skin?

Put it in the oven at 180C and wait 45minutes, coat with oil sit in shallow dish of oil -roast potato!🙂

Put in the oven at 220c and wait 25min. (again with the oil). 🙂 BUT then the water in layers of potato closer to the surface will boil and explode because the outer skin has sealed and hardened and gone lovely and crispy so prick the potato so the steam escapes. But that steam that is escaping is drying the potato🙁

Perhaps use the microwave on low power to get the internal temperature up to 80C then hit the hot oven to do the finishing. You get the really crisp skin and it wont explode as the steam will escape before the outside goes crisp.

What I do is boil it first for about 8~10 minutes then roast at 180C. If i want super crispy skin boil it for 12 minutes or till it is fully cooked then hit the oven.

 

Note the 180C. If you use 160C it will crisp but it wont change to that lovely "browned" color. You can get it at 160C but the texture of the outside is tending to leather.

 

(there is also an article somewhere about holding the spud at 50C for 45 minutes to do something to the proteins)

 

One more thing. You can brine potatoes. It sort of firms them up so the end texture when cooked is firmer. (good for stews etc when you don't want them to break up)

 

 

 Choose your poison ! 😁