I’ve always maintained jacket potatoes would be the perfect midweek meal, if only they didn’t take so long to cook.
Though we’ve found some pretty effective speedy cooking methods here at HuffPost UK, I still maintain that the best results come from an oven.
So, if you’re going to all that hassle, you want the best results possible, right?
For Mary Berry, that involves mixing some delicious toppings into the spuds. For Jamie Oliver, the carby delight deserves homemade beans.
But Nigella Lawson’s advice is more fundamental ― how she prepares her spuds for baking turns them into “a mixture of roast and baked potatoes,” she says.
The end result? “The tops crisp and cook to a beautiful gold, but you still have the fluffiness underneath,” she explains.
How does Nigella make jacket potatoes taste like roast ones?
According to the chef, the secret’s in the slicing.
Rather than simply cutting her potatoes once, she cuts them in half lengthways and scores their exposed sides in a criss-cross, diamond pattern.
The key is not to go deeper than about 3mm, Nigella said in her cookbook Simply Nigella.
Then, she pours olive oil and flaky salt on the criss-crossed side and places it, skin-side down, in the oven. It cooks until golden and crispy.
Michelin-trained chef Poppy O’Toole has shared a similar method before, stating that cutting a star shape, rather than a line or a cross, into the top of a whole potato makes it “extra delicious and crispy”.
Why does cutting a potato more often make it crispier?
It works because the potato has more surface area that the oil can reach and make crispy.
That’s why options like TikTok’s 15-hour potato, which has almost as many layers as puff pastry, is so deafeningly crunchy.
For Nigella’s recipe, she advises: “If you want the skins to be crunchy, then pour a little olive oil into your hand and rub this onto the skins before you bake.”