DOING THE BAKED POTATO.

The whole idea of a jacket potato is magnificent in its single-mindedness. And then, you get to have fun with it (like smashing it).

Crisp outside, soft inside: it’s pretty much how everything should be.  Especially potato, which very kindly supplies a crisp, crackling, patent-leather skin and a soft, mushy, mashed-potato inside, when thrown into the oven for an hour. Here’s how.

# Use a starchy potato for baking, because it’s the starch that absorbs the water within the potato as it bakes, leaving it drier and fluffier. Go for the red-skinned Desiree if you prefer your spud lighter and fluffier, or the mighty King Edward, if you like it denser and earthier.  Woollies has King Eds for around $2 for one 300g monster.

# You already know what you would top it with, I’m sure, but just in case: the classic  sour cream and chives, or gruyere and crisp bacon bits, or baked beans, or chile con carne, salsa and cheese, a creamy egg salad, or a beautiful left-over curry and raita. Or deep-fried harbour prawns and brown butter mayo. Or, speaking of single-mindedness, just butter, glorious butter, melting like golden lava.

# Splitting a baked potato is a science. Do it while the spud is still hot or it will get steamy inside and the skin will lose crispness. You can just do one long cut from end to end and then push in from the sides to open it up, or do a second cut from side to side, then push in to open up into a cross-section. Fluffing up the inside potato with a fork makes it super-light and airy. See also my CRASH-HOT SMASHED JACKET POTATOES, below.

# It seems to be a thing, to turn a healthy baked potato into an unhealthy dinner by loading it with massive amounts of more carbs and cheeses. Don’t. Do a deeper dive, instead, and think about what dishes you love eating that have potato involved, and then flip that into a baked potato topping. If you like fish pie topped with mashed potato, for instance, then cook some salmon and a couple of prawns in a dill-flecked white sauce, and ladle that on top of a split jacket potato.

Or do this choucroute mash-up of sauerkraut, frankfurt and mustard, treating the jacket potato as a potato roll, ha ha.

Or this left-over lamb stew with red wine and anchovies, ladled over a split baked potato and topped with peas, like a reverse shepherd’s pie. The rich gravy sinks down and gets absorbed by the potato; it’s really quite divine.

BAKED POTATOES, THE RECIPE.

Now it’s your turn to come up with a few ideas.

• 2 baking potatoes, around 250g/300g each

• 1 tbsp e/v olive oil

• 1 tsp sea salt

Heat the oven to 200C.

Scrub the potatoes, and towel dry.

Prick the skin lightly, coat in olive oil, and roll in sea salt.

Bake directly on the rack in the centre of the oven for 1 hour. Give it another 15 minutes or so, until the skin is crisp, and the potato is tender when pierced with a bamboo skewer. Serves 2.

Tip: Larger potatoes will take more time, obvs. If you can hear your potatoes whistling gently at you when you open the oven door, they’re probably done. Or just being cheeky.

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LET’S GO BIG. LET’S GO CRASH-HOT SMASHED JACKET POTATOES.

Let my worlds collide. Smashed potatoes (which I originally called crash-hot potatoes back in the Nineties) have taken over the world – see Instagram hashtag #smashed potatoes, with 55.4k posts.

Now I’m suggesting you do this to whole, large, baked potatoes, not just small boiled ones. Take out of the oven, and crush, flatten or otherwise turn into roadkill. Show them some olive oil love and throw them back into the oven at 220C for 20 to 30 minutes until chippy-crisp. Serve whatever you want on top. Or just eat it.

OTHER PEOPLE’S

Lots of good ideas here from some of the best in their field.

My mate Myffy Rigby is all about the jacket potato party, which she demonstrated on The Cook Up with Adam Liaw. You set out trays of hot-from-the-oven spuds and all the fixings -  very handy when there are multiple dietaries around.

Baked potatoes with hot-smoked salmon, a great idea from the clever UK delicious magazine team.

Nagi of Recipe Tin Eats does that thing where you scoop out the cooked potato, fluff it up and put it back with all sorts of creamy, bacony things.

Plenty of ideas here on Good Food from Katrina Meynink; I think I’ll go the wild mushroom stew with parmi myself.

Cheesy chat jacket potatoes. Very cute, Donna.

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Thanks for reading! And special thanks to my right-hand man, Terry Durack for making the gorgeous lamb stew with red wine and anchovies that inspired me to do baked potatoes this week, just so I could ladle the leftovers on top for dinner.

I would also like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the lands and waters upon which I work, live, cook and play; the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. I fully support the Uluru Statement from the Heart, and for an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voice to be enshrined in Australia’s Constitution. It’s about time, folks.