Perfect baked potatoes

jessbrown100

cooking-mama wrote: »

Ive recently started baking potatoes in my halogen oven,they are realy nice oven baked in around 40mins..(I dont realy like microwave baked tatties,and i would never put on my main oven just to bake them either)..but i will try these new McCaine baked tatties,apparantly they taste very nice and on a par with oven baked ones,could be handy for my 2 teenage daughters who can cook/wont cook...or would more likely put the oven on then wander off into ipod/laptop land,and forget oven was on.!!!..ready prepared microwave tatties would be safer in that instance lol..I remember when oven chips were ridiculed,now they are almost "the norm",much healthier than deep fried ones anyway(tho i do make my own chips 99% of the time since buying an actifry).anyhow,dont knock it til youve tried i say,so im planning on trying...Altho in true Moneysaving style,only if i can find them somewhere at a reduced introductory price.;)

Sorry, bit off topic, but are those Actifry dooberries any good Cooking-mama? Whenever the advert is the TV I always think 'ooh I quite fancy one of those' but not sure if I'd get my money's worth of use from one, also do they taste like 'real' chip pan chips?

krlyr

cooking-mama wrote: »

only if i can find them somewhere at a reduced introductory price.;)

50p off voucher up on the McCain website if it helps
http://www.mccain.co.uk/mccain-products/

sonastin

Slightly off-topic but it does kinda support terra-firma's point...

Back when I was at Uni, myself and my flat mates regularly dined on jacket spuds with beans and/or cheese done in the microwave. We had an international student staying in our flat who happened to come from a remarkably privileged background. She was the most impractical person I have ever met (before, or since!). She saw these spuds that us poor impoverished living-in-our-overdrafts-and-off-our-loans students were eating and decided to try it for herself. So instead of buying potatoes and asking us what to do with them she bought one of the pre-prepared ones from M&S and followed the instructions on the packaging. Trouble was that our microwave was my parents hand-me-down and only 500W. The instructions she read were for a 1000W microwave. When the spud came out solid and cold, it went in the bin. She wasted the best part of £2 (I think - it was a while ago) trying to copy something that usually costs about 30p largely down to a lack of common sense. I wouldn't mind but the microwave door even had "500W" printed on it!

There is convenience and there is dumbing down for the ignorant - one is good, the other less so.

I'll reserve judgement on these spuds until I'm in a position to try them Aunt Bessie still does a better roastie than I can manage but I am persevering!

System

I don't mind these. Sometimes you need something quick and a baked potato in 4.5 minutes is perfect. Obviously if you've time its best to cook from scratch but these are ok. I think they are £1 for 2.

Theres too many luddites on this forum scared of advancement :-)

Ben84

Baked potatoes are to me winter food, so having the oven on for 1-2 hours is fine as it helps heat the house. You do however have to wait, but then again I could just as easily put some in the oven when I have a spare shelf in there and freeze them for reheating later if I wanted to save time or gas.

sock-knitter

i always do my jacket spud in microwave for 5 to 6 mins anyway, i'm not going to start paying ridiculous prices, for just a potato

Byatt

Interesting reading!

Just a small point, but they are ideal for my DD who has autism, and it's hit and miss with her cooking skills, dependent on mood she's in and stress levels. She has been buying take aways far too often as she's too tired to think about cooking anything. She has cooked "proper" potatoes in the microwave but prefers oven cooked. These fit the bill perfectly for her; something quick when she's hungry and tasty too.

For myself I will experiment with a "real" potato and see if it tastes ok after freezing.

BitterAndTwisted

There are no end of things that are available on the supermarket shelves, fridges and freezers which I would never buy in a million years. I don't care much what other people choose to do with their own money. Some people have skills or time constraints which I don't but that doesn't make them foolish or bad, or me superior to anyone just because I know how to make things from scratch and enjoy making them. I have no suitable pan to make chips at home and I really don't need one hanging around with oil in it so I very occasionally buy frozen oven-type ones. No guilt here! They are very nice and cheap, too. Not cheaper than buying spuds I know, but I do buy spuds in any case, just not to make chippy chip chips.

Kevie192

Looks like the average oven is about 800w-1500w and my microwave is 700w. A kwh of electricity costs me 8.7p so an hour in the oven is about 7-12p whilst 12 mins in a microwave is about 1.5p

HTH

Kevin

savageHK

Don't you also need to allow the cost of keeping the spuds frozen?