Baked potatoes are a perfectly warm and soft starch, not to mention the ideal blank canvas to fill with a smattering of your favorite toppings. From crumbled bits of bacon to vibrant avocado slices, just about anything goes. While it’s difficult to mess up such an effortlessly customizable dish, there is one common topping mistake plenty of chefs don’t even know they’re making — and it’s ruining their baked potatoes. The next time you make this simple dish, don’t add your toppings while they’re still cold. For lovers of sour cream or chopped green onions, hear us out.
These toppings might add a satisfying punch of crunch or tang to a potato, but they’re also rapidly cooling the interior. To avoid a quick shift from a steaming hot spud to a lackluster plate, don’t add cold ingredients to the potato straight from the fridge. Instead, leave them out while you’re prepping your potato for the oven to allow them to come to room temperature. This will make the toppings melt into the potato effortlessly, making for a much more cohesive dish. Instead of the baked potato becoming cold, the toppings will become one with the star of the show, just like Mother Nature intended.
Another way to bring toppings to room temperature
If you forget to prep your cold toppings along with your potatoes, there is another way to quickly bring toppings to room temperature. This technique works for baked potatoes cooked in foil. Right after you grab the starch steaming out of the oven, open the foil, add in your toppings, and close it up again. The chilled additions will heat up in no time, and all that heat will stay inside the potato instead of leaking out into the air. This hack might not be ideal for lovers of crispy baked potatoes, but for everyone else, it’s fair game.
Adding cold toppings to this dish is just one of the many mistakes that can lead to bland baked potatoes. Luckily, it comes with a simple fix. And as for any toppings you feel are best served cold, simply keep them in the fridge until you’ve finished dressing your spud with everything else.
If the above techniques don’t work for you or your recipe, try switching up your toppings instead. At a loss for ideas? Try some of these 12 ingredients that can upgrade baked potatoes.
