Outback Style Baked Potatoes

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Baby it’s cold outside! It’s been years since I’ve seen truly cold weather – I mean single digit temperatures with below-zero wind chill. In order to help keep the heat bill down but stay warm, we’ve weather proofed our ground-floor apartment; plastic over the patio slider, towel rolled up as a stopper under the front door, using candles almost daily, and lots and lots of baking.

Soups are also very warm and comforting, and I’ve been making a lot of soups lately, too. One of our favorite soups is a loaded baked potato soup that’s easy, hearty, creamy, and delicious! It calls for baked potatoes, and in the past I’d just pop several in the microwave to get them done quickly.

This apartment doesn’t have a microwave. I need to bake potatoes. Bummer? No. Opportunity? YES!

I had seen this pin for Outback Style Backed Potatoes by Shawn from I Wash You Dry. There’s something wonderful about a perfectly baked potato with a nice crispy skin, fluffy interior, and slightly salty outside for flavor. Mmm!

And baked potatoes are so versatile! This one pin will bring four recipes – FOUR!  That’s a lot of bang for your baking buck. In addition to the baked potatoes, I’ll be making the baked potato soup, potato skins, and a breakfast post.

http://www.iwashyoudry.com/2012/05/02/how-to-wednesday-baking-a-potato/

So here we go. I got a bag of Russet potatoes and used 8 for what I had in mind.

I scrubbed them all clean because I like to eat the skins, but not the dirt.

Pat dry – very important if you want crisp skins.

Pierce them several times on both sides with a fork. Please do this carefully. Do NOT look away for a second.

Brush the potatoes with olive oil.

Sprinkle with course salt. The recipe called for sea salt, but I used kosher salt. It was still salty.

I put them on a sheet pan to transfer them to the oven more easily.

Bake in a pre-heated oven. Since they sit directly on the rack, and the bottoms as well as the tops had been pierced, it’s best to put the sheet pan under to catch the drips. Yes, they will drip.

***NOTE: Do you see the oven thermometer hanging from the oven rack just below the potatoes? If your baked goods don’t consistently come out right – GET ONE! It will be the best $5 you will spend. Once you know how true (or off, in my case) your oven is, you’ll be able to compensate and get accurate temps.  This will improve ALL baking immensely.

Back to the recipe…

The potatoes are done. The outer skins are crispy and salty, and the insides are soft and fluffy.

Yum!

Since I’m not using these to eat as baked potatoes, I’ve let them cool a bit then cut them in half for easy scooping. The insides will go into the soup and the outsides will be potato skins. The two uncut potatoes on top will be the breakfast recipe.

Watch for these upcoming pins and recipes!

And now for the Pintesting results!

Overall Results: 5 Pins

Accuracy: This recipe is very simple and straight forward. Shawn did a wonderful job with her step-by-step photos, and the potatoes turned out perfect. 5 Pins

Difficulty: Wash, dry, pierce, oil, salt, bake. Grunted out monosyllabic instructions are about as easy as it gets. I wouldn’t let young children pierce the potatoes or use the oven, but they could do the rest of the steps very easily. 5 Pins

Time: The prep time was about 5 minutes (not including the time to take the pictures). Due to the 45-60 minutes of baking time, this gets 4 Pins

Cost: The bag of potatoes was $3, and I had the salt and oil. 5 Pins

Practicality: On their own, baked potatoes are delicious (salt and butter, no sour cream on mine). But considering how versatile they can be – I mean, 4 posts from one baked potato recipe – that’s about as practical as you can get. 5 Pins