In Episode 072 we are making Baked Potatoes in the Instant Pot! Susie shares this method for making Baked Potatoes that is fast and easy. If you purchase 8-12 oz. russet potatoes they will cook in your electric pressure cooker in about a 15 minute cook time with a 15 minute natural release. Top them up with your favorite loaded baked potato toppings and it’s time to eat!
Transcript
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Intro: Hey, hey everybody. Welcome to another episode of Let’s Make Dinner, your audio library of amazing dinner recipes you can always get on the table. I’m your host, Susie Weinrich.
Susie Weinrich: What’s up everybody? All right, so do I have any Instant Pot lovers out there? I know that I am a huge fan of my Instant Pot. When I got it, of course, I was first very scared of it. I definitely thought it was going to blow up my entire house. I made everybody leave the kitchen the first couple times I used the Instant Pot, even for the water test. That first little test that you do in the beginning, definitely thought it was going to explode and throw shrapnel all over my house. But it did not, and I’ve become more and more comfortable with my Instant Pot as time has gone on.
I love cooking just about everything in my Instant Pot. Everything from hard boiled eggs, which is divine. I mean the shell literally slips off the egg and you can go back, I’m not sure which episode it is, but I will link that episode for the hard boiled eggs in the show notes for you guys. I love cooking soup, even large cuts of meat, such as pot roast, pulled pork, barbecue, beef, carnitas, anything works so well in the Instant Pot and it really cuts down the time and makes a lot of dishes, more hands off than they would normally be.
Just like the recipe we’re going to go over today. Today we are talking about making baked potatoes in your Instant Pot. The nice thing about this is that it shortens the amount of time. So if you were to make baked potatoes in your oven, you’re looking at definitely 60 minutes, if not longer. You could also do them in the microwave, but that’s a lot of watching, checking, piercing. You know, there’s a lot of moving parts when you bake potatoes in the microwave.
The nice thing about using your Instant Pot is you’re going to pop them in there, you’re going to set it, you’re going to forget it, come back, they’re going to be good to go, and it’s going to be a much shorter time. So I think in total we’re talking for like 30 minutes. So it’s going to be like a 15 minute cook time with a 15 minute natural release depending on what size your baked potatoes are.
Tips and Tricks: So let’s go ahead and get into talking about this full recipe. There’s going to be a lot of little tips and tricks instead of just running through a full recipe because the actual recipe is so short.
So first let’s talk about the potatoes. A traditional baked potato is made with a russet potato, and that’s what we’re using here. So a russet potato may also be known as a baking potato or an Idaho potato. I’ve even heard of them called, this is super weird, an old potato. I’ve never seen it in the grocery store, but if you look it up, if you look up Russet potatoes, old potato is one of the words that they use to describe it. Generally it’s going to be baking potatoes or russet potatoes that you’ll find in your grocery store. The other thing is that they vary wildly in size. You can find potatoes that are pretty small. They’re going to be like four to seven ounces each. Then you can find something in the mid-range, so maybe like an eight to 12 ounce. And then you can find crazy large potatoes that look like the size of a thigh that are a pound or more each.
I think the great size when you’re looking at making a side dish or even a meal with a baked potato is more of that middle range. So anywhere from eight to 12 ounces per Russet potato is going to be perfect, and that is what this recipe is written for.
The other thing is when you’re eating a baked potato, maybe you want to eat the outside, maybe you don’t. But Russet potatoes definitely have a layer of dirt on the outside. So you want to make sure that before you start this, that you give them a nice scrub or a nice wash under some running water. But if you do like to eat the skin of the baked potato and you want it to be a little bit crispy, there is an option that we’ll go over after the recipe where you can actually crisp the skin up in the oven. Because obviously if you’re cooking it in the Instant pot, the skin is not going to get crispy.
Instant Pot Baked Potato Recipe: So let’s go ahead and get into the full recipe for Instant Pot Baked Potatoes. Like we said before, go ahead and wash your potatoes, then make sure that you take a fork or a really sharp knife and pierce your potato all over so they don’t explode from the pressure in the Instant Pot. Then you’re going to pour about one to one and a half cups of water just down into the inner pot of your Instant Pot. Then you’ll take that trivet that came with your Instant Pot, it’s like a little metal table looking thing, pop that into your Instant Pot and then go ahead and pile your potatoes right on top of that trivet.
If you’re using that eight to 12 ounce range of potato size, you’re going to fit probably four or five potatoes in your Instant Pot. The only thing you need to watch, you can layer them up, put them all in there. They can stack on top of each other. You just want to make sure that you don’t go past that max fill line that’s on the inner pot of the Instant Pot. You’ll see it, it’ll be a little line somewhere near the top and it will say max fill. So once you have those potatoes in there, go ahead and close the lid, turn that pressure valve to seal, and then set your pot to cook on high pressure for 15 minutes.
Now, if you have smaller potatoes, if you found that you bought some smaller potatoes, then just set it for 10 minutes. If you found that you have the gigantic potatoes, then you do want to set it for 20 minutes. Let your pot come to pressure. Cook for, we’ll say 15 minutes for the medium sized potatoes. Then at the end you’re going to do something called a natural pressure release. What that is, your pot will count down to zero, beep telling you that it’s done and then it will start to count back up in time. That counting back up in time is considered a natural release. It’s no longer building pressure. The pressure starts to naturally dissipate. It’s just a nice way to have just a little bit more cooking time without it being that high pressure. So do that natural release for 15 minutes and then you’ll turn that valve on top to release. The remaining pressure will escape, and then you can open up the pot and your baked potatoes should be done, tender and soft all the way through.
Now, here’s one little tip. If you want to check the true doneness of your baked potato, you can actually use an internal instant read thermometer. So go ahead and slide that into your potato. If it reaches right around 210 degrees, that means that your potato is going to be perfectly soft. It’s not going to be still a little firm. Now at this point, your potatoes are good to go. You can absolutely go ahead and eat them. But if you like to have a little bit of a crispy skin on your potato, then you’ll just want to give them a little rub with olive oil. Pop them in a 450 degree oven for about eight minutes, and you’ll just want to flip them during that cooking time. They should get a nice little crispiness on the outside. Of course, if you like it even more crispy, leave it in there a little bit longer, but make sure you’re watching so that they do not burn.
Then of course when you’re serving them, we recommend just to load them up however you like. Butter, sour cream, cheese, bacon, green onions, even chili would be excellent poured over top of these baked potatoes.
This is going to be really weird and I wasn’t even going to share this, but now I’m thinking about it. So how I like to eat my baked potatoes is just a little bit of butter, a good amount of kosher salt, a really generous drizzle of Italian dressing, and then black olives. It’s so weird and I’m not even sure how I came across eating them like that, but it is absolutely delicious. So if you want to maybe save a few calories and you’re not trying to have all the sour cream and cheese and all of that, give that method a try. It’s actually super delicious. Sometimes I’ll even put a little cottage cheese on top. It’s so bizarre, but it’s great.
If you like any really weird toppings on your baked potato, I would love to hear in the comments of the actual recipe. So you can click through the link in the show notes to the baked potato recipe, jump down to the comments and just let me know what toppings you like on your baked potato.
So of course, like I said, all of the recipes that I talked about here today will be linked right in the show notes for you, so you can pin them, save them, make them whenever you’re ready.
Outro: Until next time, I hope this episode of Let’s Make Dinner makes your dinner time a little easier. See ya.
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