speaking of baked potatoes...

No foil. Baked potatos are supposed to be dry and fluffy. They hold more butter that way.

No, no, no!!! Not dry and fluffy - moist and sticky is the best way to eat them. Don't tell me, after all that, that you use MARGARINE!!! It's butter, butter, butter, all the way!

Butter, of course. Moist and sticky means foil, unless I'm mistaken

I think it depends on the potato, spud-head.

I've gone through potato deprivation in New Mexico. I have no interest in Idaho potatoes, the mealy things. I admit buying some recently, but haven't cooked them yet. I like boiling potatoes, preferably reds or golds, for flavor. They don't bake the same here, far as I can tell, just are not as delicious.

I like steaming them with the skin on. I love little new potatoes - especially Yukon Golds. Yum!

Indeed, it all depends on the potato.
Around here they've taken to selling the good ones individually, sealed in plastic with microwave instructions printed on.

You can't find a bag of decent potatoes anymore, they're all hard things with green all over.
It's my understanding that green potatoes are actually mildly poisonous.

I bake a potato (no foil) in a 450 degree oven for about an hour. Soft and gooey on the inside. Crisp and delish on the outside.

LOTS of butter and salt. When the spirit moves me, I have sour cream as well.

Slurp. Getting hungry.

Exactly how I like them

That's how I do mine, except after scrubbing and drying, I rub a bit of olive oil on them before baking (makes the skin crispy good!). Mr.Irish likes his with just a little butter and S&P. He accuses me of adulterating mine because I like butter, a bit of good cheddar, sour cream and chives.

We only used to have baked potatoes when harvesting them .... ages ago: after they were harvested, a "potato fire" (fire made from dried potato leaves etc) was lit.
Done here by a kindergarden (= nursery) last year


For such, you can use any variety of potatoes, just with salt and butter.

When done in the oven, I have to look at varieties ("pedigree") sold here (you don't get more than about ten out of the 100 something sold in Germany in a normal supermarket).

There are 5 (?) labels of a potato: waxy, primarily waxy, medium, floury, and starchy.

When I use large ones from 'medium', I like them with tzadziki, without skin.
Small waxy ones just with butter and salt ... and skin.

Years ago I thought I read that some anthropologists "sort" humanity based on the carbohydrate they eat as their "staple." In other words, those that eat wheat (pasta or bread), those that eat potatoes, and those that eat rice, as their respective staple, have some evolutionary affinity? Did you ever hear this?

It might be a valuable theory, regardless, if Germany wants to be closer to Russia for its natural gas, or if German factories would be built in Russia for its labor (rather than "import" more Turkish guest workers).

Potato skins are delicious.

To the matterhorn of baking potatoes, I have 2 usual methods. Wrapped in foil with a partial exposure (half wrapped) so I can have the crisped skin or slam them on the spike-mobile and then place them in the oven (careful slamming them on the spikes or it could go through your hand or wrist).

I adore potatoes, I can eat them in almost every way imaginable. With butter, without butter, with sour cream, without, with bacon, without, with cheese, without (any cheese will do), with vegetables, without, with a fried egg (yolk still liquid) or without.

A full foil bake involves then taking said potato from the foil and either placing it in a skillet and letting the skin cook up (this can be done with or without butter or oil, use a nonsticker for best results so the potato doesn't stick and become a mess) or take the potato place it on a skewer and roast it over a fire (the burners on the stove work well but you need to hold the skewered potato above the flame or it will stick to the burners).

Cook time for a baker varies according to the size of the potato.

By the way, I love potatoes, raw, baked, boiled, mashed, fried...

Any way except potatoes au rotten.

Ever bake a potato on an engine block?

No, but back in my irresponsible youth, I gave a friend the opportunity to bake a hunk of linburger cheese on his Chevy smallblock. Just as well he didn't know it was me.

Hey! Who baked the cheese?

I did. It was an old, and dare I say humorless Army buddy who got the benefits.