There are plenty of formulas people use to try to figure out how long to bake a potato. Pretty much everyone agrees that traditional baking makes for the lightest, fluffiest results, but no one knows how long to go.
This simple trick makes it easy to get the perfect spud every time.
Directions
Start with russets, and one wooden shish-kabob skewer for each one.
Pierce each potato lengthwise with a skewer. Don’t hold it this way.
You’ll need to push really hard to go through a raw potato. If you go all the way through you can keep going right into your hand. Hold it this way instead.
You probably won’t be able to get the skewer all the way through. That’s fine, as long as you get at least through the center. Leave a couple of inches sticking out, but break the rest off.
Tear off a piece of foil for each potato, large enough to wrap it completely.
Wet each potato just enough for salt to stick, and coat all the way around with kosher salt.
Wrap the potatoes, and put in the oven at 400° for about 45 minutes.
Now for the trick: Pull gently on the skewer. When it comes out without resistance, it’s done.
Seems a little too simple, doesn’t it? But yes, it’s just that easy. If it doesn’t come right out, go another 10 minutes in the oven.
Now that it’s perfectly baked, you need to top it. This is a great time to have fresh chives growing outside.
Did you know chives will come back in the spring? I didn’t. Totally unexpected, and just in time for the cookout. Cut a little with your kitchen shears or regular scissors.
Slice a potato in half. Cut a cross-hatch pattern in the top and put a pat of butter on each side. Top with some diced chive and serve.
And that’s it.
Bonus – Cucumber and Onion Salad
The cucumber and onion salad you find on a typical salad bar has a mayonnaise-based dressing, which usually means corn syrup as the #1 ingredient. I could fix this problem just by using home-made mayonnaise. But this recipe is even simpler.
This is about the easiest, lightest, freshest-tasting salad you can make. I could easily go through a whole batch of this by myself every week all summer.
Ingredients
1 large cucumber
1 large sweet onion
(onion and cucumber should be about the same weight)
white vinegar
Directions
Slice the onion into shreds.
Combine the cucumber and onion in a large bowl.
Realize that the bowl you picked is barely big enough to hold everything, and nowhere near big enough to mix it. (Oops.)
Transfer to a larger bowl.
Combine the cuke and onion by mixing from the bottom.
Transfer to a large container with a tight seal.
Fill with white vinegar …
… until it’s a little less than halfway full.
Fill with water until the veggies are covered, put the lid on and shake well. Leave in the refrigerator overnight, or on the counter for three hours or more before serving.
And that’s it.
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Want more like this? For more recipes like this, that you can hold right in your hands, and write on, take notes, tear pages out if you want (Gosh, you're tough on books, aren't you?) you might be interested in How To Cook Like Your Grandmother, 2nd edition, Illustrated. Or to learn your way around the kitchen, check out Starting From Scratch: The Owner's Manual for Your Kitchen.
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7 Comments
Thanks for the tip! Sounds pretty easy once you know what you’re doing.
When I make cucumber-onion salad (we call them *refrigerator pickles*) I add a bit of salt, sugar and pepper to the vinegar mix. WIf we have a bell pepper (of any color) around i slice it into slices and add it to the mix as well. My grandma would serve these and pickled beets at every meal when i was little.
Chance, yeah, I’ve added dill, garlic, salt, pepper … pretty much whatever strikes my fancy. But when I’m doing a huge batch like this to last a couple of weeks, I stick to the basic recipe and add seasoning when I serve it.
The skewer method is brilliant!
But I have to disagree with you about the tin foil. Every time I used tin foil, the inside of the potato doesn’t get dry enough to fluff, and winds up dense. I rub mine with a little oil (whatever is on hand) and salt. Insides so fluffy I make one slit and squeeze the sides, and it all fluffs right out in potato-ey goodness.
…provided I don’t overcook them. Hence the brilliance with the skewer!
Spoon, I’ll try without the foil next time. That’s one of those things that I’ve always done because … well, because that’s how I’ve always done it, I guess. It makes sense, though, that it would need to dry out more to get fluffy. Thanks for making me question that assumption.
My grandmother made that cuke and onion salad quite often when I lived with her. The only difference is she’d add a small bit of pickling spice and some salt.
tigergirl, I Usually add the salt once it’s on my plate. I’ve tried dill and a few other things and it’s been good. But I’ve never come up with a combination that I like better than the plain version.
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[...] is it pretty. DirectionsChives come back each year, something I discovered when I was doing the baked potatoes. After a couple of years, unless you trim them back really hard, you’ll get more than you can [...]