Late Night 4 Minute Baked (Nuked) Potato

I'm sitting down with a 30 second soft pretzel to write about a 4 minute potato.

I wrote about making the perfect baked potato before.. Well, here is how to make the speedy microwaved version.

While I prefer cooking with a real oven ( and try to avoid the microwave, Foreman grills,etc) sometimes it's just not practical. I said in my potato post that it would take 45 minutes to cook. Well that's on the low end. A full hour might be necessary. But with some easy prep work the microwave works just fine.

The other night I found myself hungry and didn't have much in the way of convenience food. It was late. I didn't want to cook, and I didn't want to drive or eat Taco Bell or any of that stuff. I also didn't have much money. I DID have almost a full bag of potatoes from making cheese potato soup.

Being a Potato Purist, it wasn't easy popping this incredible spud in the microwave oven. I decided to risk it.

As you know one of the great things about potato preparation is it's fun. Damn fun. We get to slice them, dice them, stab, poke, smack, chop, and drop.

First I took a fork and violently stabbed the Russet about 3 dozen times. The point is to make several small holes in the potato.

Then I inserted the dish in a standard power residential microwave oven. After some brief calculations I decided the perfect time would be 4 minutes- 4:00.

And it was! It turned out perfectly. Medium potato. Average Microwave Power. 4 minutes. I hate to say it, but I think I may PREFER my microwaved version.

It's easy and CHEAP. I figure, when bought in 5 lb sack, a decent sized potato might run 30-35 cents. In about 5 minutes you can have a nice snack or meal. The possibility of toppings are endless. Or you can have it plain or a sprinkle of salt and pepper and a pat of butter. Whatever you like.

And don't forget for even more fun, DO The DROP!

Random Villian Goes BOTH Ways!: Random Villian from BOJ has his "lazy cooking" take on the dropped baked potato. He does the microwave and oven baked versions in one convenient video: Lazy Baked Potato Recipes and the guys from BunchOfJerks.com have added their own super baked potato recipe post.