Turns out, the baked potato has always been big and great.
In 1909, Hazen Titus, the dining car superintendent on the Northern Pacific Railway, had a vision: Having learned of a surplus of oversize spuds, he’d ordered them up and placed them on his menu. His “Great Big Baked Potato” became a hit, to be ordered, appropriately, on a train route of the same name.
Recipes:
Aglio e Olio Baked Potatoes | Caramelized Kimchi Baked Potatoes | Hot Honey Baked Sweet Potatoes
These days, a long Idaho tuber, split down the middle like a hot dog bun to reveal fluffy white starch, a pat of butter nestled into the left side, is still big and — more important — great, with its perfect creamy-crunchy-fresh combo of sour cream, chives, cheese and bacon.
I spent the past year baking pounds and pounds of potatoes to come to a simple conclusion: The baked potato is worth celebration. There may be no better (and easier) way to gather than by building on a reliable but never boring base and delighting in each turn of the flavor wheel.
Here are my tips for success:
1. Set up a bar (and really load up on toppings)
As the chef Vishwesh Bhatt writes in his 2022 cookbook-memoir, “I Am From Here”: “Potatoes are the great equalizer for many cuisines.” Every culture has a baked potato. Which is to say, it’s a generous vessel, ready to hold just about anything your guests pile on, buffet-style. You can lay out whatever ingredients you love, or, better still, consider these three fun new recipes as a starting point.
An aglio e olio baked potato, for instance, lets the classic Italian combination of garlic and oil find its most melodic expression.
Let bold, well-fermented kimchi step in for bacon in an otherwise-classic loaded baked potato. Cooked down with butter and sesame oil, kimchi mellows its sharp, tangy edges while concentrating its salty savoriness.
And thrill to the joys of a perfect sweet potato, topped with whipped goat cheese and hot honey. Your guests may ask if this is dessert or part of the meal — to which you can say, “Yes!”
2. Work ahead
Whether you choose to serve all three potatoes, focus on just one or do your own baked potato thing entirely, you can do much of the toppings prep ahead of time so that on Party Day, you the host can focus on a frankly thankless task: baking the potatoes perfectly before guests arrive.
Then, while they’re in the oven, set out a few small dishes and bowls with all the accouterments that make baked potatoes so good: fresh herbs and alliums; chunks of salty, hard cheeses (with a grater or two) and shredded soft cheeses (like Cheddar and mozzarella). Don’t forget the pats of butter, and to add a little this and that. Think salted nuts, sour cream, extra-virgin olive oil, flaky sea salt, crushed red pepper and a black pepper grinder for good measure.
3. Bake your potatoes naked
No salt, no oil, no foil. According to the Idaho Potato Commission, jacketing a baked potato in aluminum foil locks in moisture, resulting in a soggy end result. A potato needs to breathe.
In my many tests, I found that dry-baking on a sheet pan — the method used by my colleague Priya Krishna and her mother, Ritu, in their Indian-ish baked potato recipe — resulted in the fluffiest, purest-tasting spuds. Doing so gives the potatoes time to slowly cook in their own moisture while yielding crispy edges. Then, a critical period of rest — 15 minutes out of the oven — lets them finish steaming, their own gentle heat tenderizing and fluffing up the starchy flesh within.
Unless you can get lovely fresh potatoes from a farm or co-op, it’s worth skipping the old, bigger russets on your supermarket shelves. Gold and red potatoes are not only cuter, coming in smaller, more manageable sizes, but they often taste better, too.
Nostalgia and carbohydrate, a baked potato is ready to be stuffed with your hopes and dreams — and then some.
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