# Poking potatoes before baking **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** food-cooking\ **Created:** [November 16, 2020, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poking-potatoes-before-baking/925739 "2020-11-16T20:51:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 25
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2020, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poking-potatoes-before-baking/925739/25 "2020-11-16T23:21:20Z")
Funny enough we were discussing baked potatoes yesterday in this thread starting a few posts above this one of mine: > [@So What's for Dinner Tonight? (2020 Anything Goes Edition)](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-whats-for-dinner-tonight-2020-anything-goes-edition/923037/223): > > This is sorta the opposite of her low-n-slow cooking method, but they still come out pretty darn awesome. From [The BEST Baked Potato Recipe | Gimme Some Oven](https://www.gimmesomeoven.com/baked-potato/) as refined by experience. For large russets: ballpark 70 minutes from goes into oven to ready to eat = 95 minutes w warmup & prep. For sweet pots or small russets subtract 10m from each interval below = 20m total. Sweets can go longer, but don’t need to. Russets done longer get too crunchy. Preheat oven to 450F (~25minutes warmup) Clea… And in fact last night I made 5 using that recipe: 3 russets & 2 sweets. Each poked about 4 times with a fork. No explosions. But … To melt the butter for the mid-bake baste I put about 1/3stick of sorta-soft butter in a ramekin in the microwave. I melt butter in there all the time & know how to modulate things so I don’t boil the butter or get a mess. _Normalement_. After just 15 seconds I hear a loud PLORP!! from the microwave. About 90% of the butter is liquid and dripping off the oven ceiling, door, walls, etc. There’s a big puddle under the turntable and both top & bottom of the turntable itself is dripping butter. It made the kitchen smell wonderful. It didn’t help my morale a bit. :smack: --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poking-potatoes-before-baking/925739)._