Baked Potatoes

Ok in the middle of a heat streak turning on the oven is one of the last things that a normal person would want to do, but considering the house was already 85', what is a few more degrees at that point, really? We already had evacuated to the outdoors for water play and the fact that it cooled down immensely in the few hours and was cooler outside than inside, and I just had a craving: baked potatoes!

However, I hadn't cooked a baked potato in years - if ever in fact. I couldn't actually recall a time I had officially baked a potato, I've certainly boiled them and then mashed them up, but no recollection of baking them. So I went to the Internet to find myself a good link with instructions on how best to cook one, what temp, how long and I happily found this link.

Ingredients:
4 potatoes - scrubbed clean
olive oil
coarse sea salt
sour cream
cheddar cheese
green onions
bacon pieces (Hormel makes some good bacon pieces that are real bacon so you don't have to cook it and make the mess yourself!)
salt and pepper

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350' (you can cook it at a higher heat for a shorter time, see the link for details)
2. Scrub and wash the potatoes in cold water, do not soak them or wash in hot water. This causes the skin to start cooking itself and the inside will not catch up and the skin will not be as tasty later.
3. Rub/roll the potatoes in olive oil and then coarse sea salt. Puncture 4 - 1 inch slices into the potatoes on all sides - to allow steam to vent out (otherwise you'll get an exploded potato in your oven. EEK!)
4. Put directly on the oven rack (rack should be in the middle of the oven, not too high or low) - I recommend putting a flat baking sheet on the rack below to catch any excess oil drips and/or sea salt that will fall off.
   
   
5. Cook for 60-75 minutes. Mine were 'average to small' size potatoes and they cooked 75 minutes and were perfect.
6. LOAD EM UP and eat!

I likely would cook them at 400' for less time, but since it was so hot in the house - heating the oven that high seemed like a horrific idea at the time - so waiting the extra time was well worth the heat temp in the house only climbing 2 degrees. The potatoes were delicious and the skin (which is where most of the vitamins are) was freakin' amazing!!!