Craving baked potatoes this week, like our ultimate twice-baked potato recipe? Before you get started, note there are some important tips for delicious baked potatoes, and one of these tips is often debated: Pricking the potatoes. Do you really need to add holes to potatoes before baking them?
The answer is not as clear cut as we would like it to be, but if you’re cooking a whole potato in the microwave, the answer is a resounding, yes – always prick it first. You can do so using the tines of a fork, pricking the entire surface area of the potato. If you don’t make holes in the potato, it can explode in the microwave. As the potato heats up in the appliance, the heated water in the tuber becomes steam that the potato skin traps within. Without the holes, the steam does not escape from the potato. Instead, it can build, and pent up may ultimately cause the potato to explode.
The result? Mashed potatoes all over your microwave and a sticky, starchy, gluey mess. The clean up will be difficult and that explosion could be dangerous. Pricking the potatoes first before microwaving them is an easy step that helps prevent a mess and ensures even cooking and fluffy potatoes. Oh, and be sure to use damp paper towels wrapped around them for microwaved baked potatoes.
Do prick your potatoes to avoid messy clean ups
But we all know that ultimately, the best baked potatoes take longer, and need to go in the oven, or at least the air fryer to get that lovely crispy skin, which is enhanced if you coat your potatoes in olive oil and salt. In that case, do you still need to prick the potatoes first? Well, based on our own experiments at home, we have never had a potato explode on us, regardless of whether they were pricked first or not.
Across the internet, people have similar experiences with oven-baked potatoes not needing a pricking before being cooked. However, that doesn’t mean it definitely won’t explode. We did find Reddit evidence of an exploded potato in the oven; the chance is just slim. It takes up to an hour for potatoes to bake in the oven versus about 10 minutes in the microwave. In the oven, steam can gradually escape from natural breaks in the skin with less need for pricking.
One alternative is to bake your potatoes on a spike. You can thread them onto a metal skewer, or buy a pronged gadget like this jacket potato spiker on Amazon to cook several potatoes at once. This negates the need for poking holes in.
Our final verdict? It’s still a good idea to prick your potatoes first, just to be safe. It won’t affect the taste. After all, it takes less than a minute to puncture holes all over a potato, and it’s an easy step to help avoid messy clean ups later on.
