by Sarah Lewis

Created on: March 16, 2010

A baked potato is the healthy option. Enjoy a well baked floury potato filled with lean meat and salad and you have a nutritional and inexpensive meal.

But a good baked potato much depends on the type of potato you use. Many cooks will choose one of the red potatoes that give a good floury texture when they have been baked.

The King Edward makes the perfect baking potato, the flesh is firm and floury and once the skin is baked it crisps well and provides us with our daily helping of fibre.

 If a baked potato is going to look good then it really needs to be a decent size and well shaped, if your supermarket allows then hand pick your own at the vegetable counter.

Allow one large potato per person and check the skins and flesh for blemishes and soft spots before you buy them.

 Put the potatoes into a bowl of cold water and give them a good scrub, if there are any tiny blemishes then make sure that they are removed using the tip of a kitchen knife.

Once the potatoes are clean then they are ready to be pricked with a fork. Take the fork and make sure that the skin is well pricked, this allows the potatoes to cook all of the way through without splitting their skins. If you forget to pierce the skin then it is highly likely that the potato may burst in the heat of the oven and that will spoil the whole effect.

 Some people enjoy soft baked potato skins and others ( like me) much prefer a crispy skin.

If you are baking them for small children then it is a good idea to scoop the cooked potato out of the skin altogether , add some butter to the cooked potato and serve it like a mash.

 For a softer skin just rub some Olive oil into the skin of the potato before it goes into the oven.

If you want a good crispy skin then rub the skin with a drop of Olive oil and then sprinkle the oily skin with coarse Sea-salt.

 Baked potatoes need to be cooked in a hot oven. A normal sized potato will take somewhere in the region of about 40 minutes to cook in an oven temperature of 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

If you are baking a number of potatoes together then try and choose potatoes that are roughly an equal size, this means that they will all bake in more or less the same time.

 The potatoes that have oiled skins will have softer skins when they have been baked but the potatoes that have been oiled and salted will have good crunchy skins.

 It is easy to see if the potato is fully baked, just take a skewer and stick it into the fleshy part, as long as it feels soft then the flesh will be cooked.

Once the baked potatoes have been removed from the oven then serve them as soon as possible.

Take the kitchen knife and slice the skin through on the top of the potato ( in the form of a cross) then using a clean tea towel hold the hot baked potato at the sides and gently push the soft fleshy part up through the opening that you have made with the knife.

Put some butter, or low fat spread onto the top of the potato and it is ready to serve.

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