Julie Biuso from Shared Kitchen spoke to Jesse Mulligan about her recipe for the perfect comfort food for chilly winter lunches or dinners - jacket-baked potatoes.
Simple you may think, but according to Julie, most people make inferior potatoes, so she gave a few tips for simply scrumtious jacket-baked potatoes.
Smashing jacket potatoes Photo: Supplied \Shared Kitchen
The key is to cook them at a high temperature for a long time, she says.
“What I'm going to suggest is they're cooked longer until the skin is really crunchy. And it just changes them, it just makes them into a glorious thing that you just want to feast on.”
Most people do cook them until the potato is just done, but that's not the real deal, she says.
"It's that combination of that crunchy skin and that fluffy interior which is just a really beautiful thing."
Julie says agria potatoes are best, in the oven for one and a quarter to one and a half hours at 200 degrees C.
Once washed and still wet they need salt, she says.
"You have the potatoes wet, you put the salt on a piece of baking paper, or kitchen paper, or on a plate and kind of pass the potatoes through the salt and then transfer with tongs to the oven."
Prick them at this point to avoid them exploding when you remove them, she says.
"Just on the oven rack, not on an oven tray, you need that heat to circulate all around."
Don't oil them, she says, as this will only make the skins less crispy.
"The minute they come out of the oven, get your knife and cut them in half. Put them on the chopping board and immediately cut them open and let the steam come out because if you don't, within five minutes, that steam starts to soften the skin."
And delicious they might be but they're good for us too, Julie says.
"This is the other thing is of course we’re cooking potatoes without any water, so you're retaining all of that vitamin C, because vitamin C is leached out into the water if you boil them.
"And we’ve got really, really great fibre you know we got a problem with bowel cancer in New Zealand so we need to get more dietary fibre."
Some of Julie's favourite toppings include, eggs fried with chilli, chilli beans and leftover cauliflower cheese.
"Mash that in and put them under the grill with a bit of cheese under."
