The 1-Ingredient Upgrade for Better Baked Potatoes (It’s Already in Your Pantry)

Think all baked potato recipes are created equal? After trying America’s Test Kitchen’s (ATK) method of baking potatoes, I can assure you that they’re not. ATK has a simple trick that guarantees you’ll get the fluffiest, most perfectly seasoned baked potato of your dreams. To try it, you’ll need one ingredient you already have in the pantry: salt. Here’s how.

The Simple Trick for the Most Flavorful Baked Potatoes

To start, preheat your oven to 450°F. Wash and dry seven- to nine-ounce russet potatoes and lightly prick each with a fork six times.

Here’s the step you may not have seen before, but you’ll never skip after trying it once: In a large bowl, stir half a cup of water and two tablespoons of salt, until the salt is dissolved. Make sure the salt is fully dissolved. Any salt crystals that sink to the bottom of the solution will likely just stay there—not very useful.

Add the potatoes to the bowl and toss to wet them with the salted water. Just a quick dip suffices—no need to soak them.

Salting a round ingredient like a potato is always a losing game. Even when coated in oil or another liquid, it’s hard to get the salt to stick. The folks at ATK came up with this genius solution (no pun intended)—use a salt brine to evenly season the potatoes. After a coating of the highly salted water, the potatoes go into the hot oven for about an hour where the water evaporates, leaving behind perfectly salted potato skins.

4 Smart Tips for Better Baked Potatoes

1. Pick the Best Potatoes for Baking: Russets are the ideal potatoes for baking. They’re high in starch and low in water. As the potatoes bake, the starch absorbs the water and swells up, creating that crumbly, fluffy texture you know and love.

2. The Ideal Oven Temperature: To transform a potato from rock hard to tender and fluffy in roughly an hour, the oven needs to be hot. ATK found that 450°F is the ideal temperature and the hottest you can bake the potatoes before the outside burns and the center remains undercooked.

3. Oil at the End: Coating the potatoes with oil or butter before they’re baked can lead to tough, papery skins. Wait to brush them with oil after they’re mostly baked through, which yields crisp potato skins with a toasty, earthy flavor.

4. Immediately Score and Fluff: As soon as the potatoes are done baking, it’s important to release liquid (in the form of steam) from them. Use a small knife to score the baked potatoes with an “X” and push them open to allow steam trapped inside to escape. When baked potatoes cool without releasing the steam, the liquid will settle back into the flesh, leading to a much denser potato.

The Easiest Way To Tell the Potatoes Are Cooked Through

Use a probe thermometer if you’ve got one. No guesswork is needed when you have a thermometer on hand! Insert the probe into the thickest part of the largest potato. They’re good to go if it reads between 205°F to 212°F—that’s the sweet spot for the fluffiest texture.