I make incisions in the innards with a fork or knife, the better to accept melted butter, than I eat the innards with the butter and whathaveyou, then I put more butter and stuff inside the shell and eat it with my hand.
Back when I still ate potatoes…
I mashed up the innards and mixed them with whatever else was on-hand. Then ate the shell.
Huh, I had no idea there were so many ways to eat a baked potato, and so many people don’t eat the skin!
I cut it in half lengthwise, and squeeze it to mush up the innards a bit. Then I flatten it with my fork and put butter on, then cut it into bite-sized pieces. I eat the insides and outsides - as bite-sized pieces - with a fork.
Slice into it with a sharp steak knife, cutting the sour cream into the mixture, eat with fork, including peelings, insides, etc.
Slice lengthwise. Fluff a bit with fork. Add butter, salt, pepper, sour cream, and then just eat it by cutting off pieces. I never really thought of it till now.
I usually cut it up into pieces, so that’s what I answered.
Unless it’s a Tater Pig. In that case, I pick it up and eat it like the guy the OP saw.
(it’s a fair food in Bozeman, consisting of a potato with a hole bored through it, then baked with a sausage in it, and served with the usual “loaded” toppings)
I cut open the potato, nearly all the way in half. Mash up the insides with butter and salt and pepper, and eat that with my meal. If I’m still hungry at the end, I’ll butter and season the potato skin, fold so it’s skin side out, and eat that with my fingers like a small sandwich or slice of bread.
I normally slice it in half, score each half, and apply butter (the scoring allows melting butter to sink into the innards better). Sometimes just sprinkle salt. i don’t need anything else.
I don’t usually eat the skin, but sometimes I do. I don’t normally pick it up and just bite into a whole one but sometimes I do, if it’s small.
dammit, off to make me a baked tater … tons of butter, salt and pepper. Got some compound butter that has roasted garlic, black pepper and chopped chives that just really needs to get used =)
Add butter, aged cheddar, sour cream, salt, pepper, and chives, mash the innards up with the additives, and eat that, leaving the shell.
I don’t know which poll entry covers spooning Wendy’s chili (doctored up with their chili sauce and sour cream) inside the potato and eating a bit at a time.
And I’ve never, ever heard of a potato skin or peel called the shell.
I’m like most other people and I cut open the potato and add butter, salt and pepper to the insides and mash them up and eat the inside first. I normally save some of the steak I’m eating with my potato so I can put a slice inside the skin with salt and pepper then pick it up and eat it like a sandwhich. I’ll normally eat my wife’s skin too.
I see that a lot of us pretty much take the baked potato and make mashed potatoes out of it. Except for the skin, which has to be FED TO THE GEESE.
I’m curious…why don’t we just make a pot of nice mashed potatoes (with whatever additives we like) and serve that, so that we don’t have to let the expensive steak cool down while we fuck around getting the baked potato ready?
Because mashed potatoes don’t have that nice crispy skin that a well-cooked potato does. And the skin is the best part.
Ditto
Green onions (or chives) missing from most of the above posts.
Mashed (i.e., boiled) and baked potatoes taste different. I don’t know if everyone perceives this, but I sure do. Even if they’re baked in an electric oven instead of with flames or coals, they have a smokey flavor.
Baked potatoes are one of the few things I can cook. :eek:
Wash them prick some holes and into the microwave.
Meanwhile prepare the thinly sliced steak and gravy.
(Of course you can eat them with butter and stuff as mentioned in the thread - but for me the skin is jolly tasty.)
This is how I do it. Silenus, you took the words right out of my mouth.
Just don’t take my baked potato. 
Orally.