Baked Potato

No, I'm not going to tell you how to make "the world's best baked potato" or "the perfect baked potato, every time" because people have different opinions on what makes the best baked potato. I will, however, tell you what I do to make my baked potatoes, for selfish reasons... If anything ever happens to the site I Pinned, I won't have a handy reminder of the temperature I bake them at. That would be fairly devastating for me, because baked potatoes are one of my favorite foods, and this is my favorite way to make them. (Seriously, I might just carve the oven temperature into the wall of my kitchen when I own a home one day.)

Baked Potato

Ingredients
potato
vegetable oil
kosher salt

Equipment
foil, baking sheet, oven

Instructions
Preheat oven to 425F. (I REPEAT: 425F! THIS IS THE INFORMATION YOU'RE LOOKING FOR, ALEX OF THE FUTURE! IT'S 425!) Rinse off your potato and pat it dry with a paper towel. Stab it a few times with a fork. (Don't stab your hand.) Holding it over the sink, drizzle vegetable oil on it and rub it with another paper towel to evenly distribute a thin layer of oil all over the potato. Still over the sink, sprinkle it with kosher salt. Set the potato on a foil-lined baking sheet. Bake for an hour.

Yields
A potato. Scalable: use more potatoes.

Total time
An hour.

Cleanup rating 1/5
Don't forget to rinse out the sink, it's all oily and salty now.

Difficulty rating 2/10
I mentioned not stabbing yourself in the hand, right?

Flavor rating 10/10
My favorite food, basically. Obviously you need to dress the potato when it's done, but that's on you. When you make it my way, you get really crispy potato skin. If you don't like crispy, wrap it in foil before you put it in the oven (and then you can skip the pan if you want).

Adjustability: high
Were you just reading that flavor rating bit? You can put ANYTHING on it. I like butter, garlic, cheddar cheese, fresh green onions, and sour cream. I also like pulled pork barbecue. I was just thinking, I'd like to try sauteeing some peppers and onions like you would for a Philly cheesesteak and chopping them up really small and putting them on a potato. And there's always other classics: bacon, broccoli, etc.

Make it with...
Nothing or anything. Great side dish; great main dish. I make mine as main dishes. It's a perfect "Birk's working tonight, what can I make for just one person" dinner. It's a great "I'm not so hungry and/or I ate a late lunch and/or I worked until 9 pm so I need to go to bed soon but I still should eat something" dinner. It's also a steak's best friend. Gets along well with chicken, too. And it's vegetarian (as long as you don't cover it in bacon bits or smother it in bbq) so it's an excellent choice for when you don't really know all your dinner guests very well. Guess what? It makes a good - if unorthodox - breakfast, too!