Baked potatoes will come out with irresistibly crispy skin every time when you coat them with two common ingredients. A British comfort-food staple, the baked potato has been a popular choice for almost 200 years, often loaded with classic toppings like beans and cheese, tuna mayo, coronation chicken or chilli con carne.
Chef's Top Tip for Perfect Jacket Potatoes
One man who knows the joys of the humble jacket is chef Will Murray, who cut his teeth at Mayfair's two-Michelin-starred Dinner by Heston Blumenthal. He now co-runs the London restaurants Fallow, Roe and FOWL with fellow chef Jack Croft.
Jacket potatoes might be simple to make, but achieving that perfectly crispy skin isn't always straightforward. Will has now revealed his "best tip" and the two ingredients he reckons make all the difference.
Speaking exclusively to us, Will said: "Yeah, so the best tip for baked potato is actually that you need to use the right potato. So if you're using a waxy potato, when it bakes, there's too high a sugar and starch content in there, so it'll be gluey by the time it's finished."
Choosing the Right Potato
He explained: "So the best potato to use in the UK is a Maris Piper and you wanna...or a King Edward. King Edward's also really good, so those two are really good for it. So you want a low-sugar sort of high-starch potato, so you basically… I cover it all over with olive oil and flaky salt."
He went on to advise: "And then you get all the texture of like the crispy potato skin. And then always allow it to steam. So like, open it up before you serve it. And what will happen is that moisture will evaporate, and then you can just start to lightly fluff it up."
Chef's Other Favourite Foods
It comes after Will named a supermarket curry sauce he considers "banging". Surprisingly, it wasn't Patak's or Sharwood's, but a more specialist offering produced by the chefs behind a renowned Mayfair Indian restaurant.
He admitted meals at home are "pretty bog standard", and that he likes a "combination of different stuff" when it comes to brands, ranging from Tesco to London charcuterie Cobble Lane Cure.
Will said: "Funny thing is, though, I've got three young kids, so it's very much a combination of different stuff for us. But we eat pretty bog standard. We shop at Tesco's and do pretty much standard stuff."
On weekends, he may opt for a "nice piece of meat", but usually works on Sundays. He added: "I use a lot...like a local deli quite a lot. So I like to get a lot of stuff from like...as much as I can from like local suppliers and local delis."
He continued: "I love, like, charcuterie from Cobble Lane Cure. So I'll get that like every now and then for the weekend. My kids just like, you know, standard stuff. They like those Heck sausage, chicken sausages, and yeah, like, you know, a good branded De Cecco pasta."
As for curry, Will enjoys: "Gymkhana curry sauces; I don't know if you guys get those? Yeah, they're really good. So yeah, they're banging."
