How to Make the Perfect Baked Potato | What’s Eating Dan?



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The perfect baked potato has a uniformly fluffy interior encased in thin, crisp skin. We baked nearly 200 pounds of potatoes to get it just right.

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29 Comments

  1. I blew up a couple potatoes in the oven about ten years ago. I was cooking at least a dozen relatively small russet potatoes and had forgot to poke them. If I had to guess, it was probably around 400 – 450 degrees, and was cooking for somewhere between 30 -45 minutes directly on the oven rack. About three or four potatoes all exploded within a few seconds of each other, making a popping noise, one after another.

  2. I had 15 baked potatoes going at 450° and at about 45 minutes they exploded all at once blowing the oven door off , it flew right across the kitchen through the back window and into the yard. I’m just thankful I wasn’t in the kitchen at the time.

  3. I do them at 425'c in an oven for 1 hour having given them the slightest rub in olive oil and sprinkle of salt on all sides (and fork pricking). Straight onto the rack. Never fails.
    It's not a dish i don't plan to have that 1 hour to make.

  4. The only time I've ever had a potato explosion happened jist as I was reaching in to grab the potato from the oven. (Was just grabbing it with an oven mitt) and it exploded away from my mitt. I don't recall temp or time as it was like 20 years ago.

  5. Dan, you're the best part of ATK. I've been watching for more than a decade, and you so remind me of how I used to be in the kitchen. My friends used to call me a "cooking nerd", but they always wanted to know if they could come over for dinner!

  6. I've had a few potato explosions. We were doing some outdoor cooking in a field. We were cooking the potatoes individually in a large thick-walled PVC pipe that was sealed off at one end. We would use aerosol hair spray as the cooking fuel, spraying some into the pipe for about 5 seconds, then shove our potato into the end of the PVC pipe. Then would ignite the fuel via the small drilled hole at the top of the sealed end of the PVC pipe. The potatoes shot out of our PVC oven. When we found them a couple hundred yards away from our cooking site they were exploded all over the ground. We lost dozens of potatoes via this method.

  7. I can pretty reliably get a potato to explode in the microwave, but I don't know if that counts! My seven year-old and I love watching "What's Eating Dan" together – he is also a big fan, and you are helping him to consider trying some new foods. Thank you!

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