Jacket potatoes, also known as baked potatoes, are the perfect dish for they are surprisingly delicious and nutritious.
Can you make jacket potatoes with a microwave? How do you make jacket potatoes in the microwave?
In today’s blog post, we are going to show you the easiest way to make a jacket potato in the microwave. Also, we will have some frequently asked questions concerning microwaving jacket potatoes answered.
How to Microwave a Jacket Potato?
You’d be amazed how easy it is to make a jacket potato in the microwave. It will only take minutes to prepare and microwave a delicious jacket potato.
Here’s the easiest recipe to microwave jacket potatoes:
- Scrub the potato thoroughly. Before you put the potato in the microwave, you would want to clean it thoroughly. We’d recommend you to rinse the potatoes and scrub them with a vegetable brush. Then, we would dry the potato with a clean cloth or some paper towel.
- Poke the potato with a fork. After cleaning the potato, you will want to poke the potato with a fork to create some holes on it. And it’s recommended to create holes on every side of the potato. With this step, it could significantly shorten the cooking time.
- Now you can put the potato in the microwave. You can directly put the potato on the turntable or you can place it on a microwave-safe plate before you microwave it. We would recommend using a plate so it would be easier to retrieve after cooking.
Microwave the potato on high power for 5 minutes. When the cooking time is over, flip the potato and microwave the other side of it for another 5 minutes.
When these 3 steps are completed, the jacket potato is well prepared. Now you could simply have the plain jacket potato made in the microwave. Or, you could add your favorite toppings to the jacket potato.
Here are popular topping ideas for jacket potatoes: tuna, bacon, chilli,cheese and more.
How Long to Microwave Jacket Potato?
When making jacket potatoes in the microwave, deciding the cooking time might be the most tricky part.
How long does it take to microwave jacket potatoes? Can you overcook a baked potato?
The cooking time for making delicious jacket potatoes varies. And it mainly depends on the size of the potato.
For common potatoes of medium size, it would be sufficient to cook them for 10 minutes in total.
If you have rather small potatoes, you could cook them for 7 minutes in the microwave, 210 seconds for each side. Meanwhile, you could cook them for 13 minutes if you have bigger potatoes for the recipe.
That is to say, the cooking time for making jacket potato in the microwave would roughly range from 7 minutes to 13 minutes.
How to Avoid Overcooking the Jacket Potato in the microwave?
It could be easy to overcook a jacket potato in the microwave if you didn’t put in the proper cooking time and cooking power.
When the potato is cooking in the microwave, we could vigilantly monitor the potato through the microwave glass. If the potato skin starts to wrinkle, it is the obvious sign that the jacket potato is about to overcook.
Another easy method you could conduct is to use some microwave-safe saran wrap or microwave-safe foil.
You would want to wrap the potato with some microwave-safe saran wrap or microwave-safe foil. It could help protect the moisture in the potato while microwaving. And thus avoid overcooking the jacket potato.
Do You Need a Microwave with Jacket Potato Function?
Can you make jacket potatoes with a common household microwave? Do you need a high-end microwave with jacket potato function to do that?
Generally speaking, a jacket potato made in the microwave could have the same texture and flavour as oven baked potatoes.
However, if you want your jacket potatoes to have crispy skin, it would be ideal to use a microwave with a convection cooking or grilling cooking methods.
RELATED READING: Best Microwaves for Baking
The convection cooking and grilling mode of the microwave can be used as a jacket potato function, to achieve crispy cooking results.
What Is the Difference Between a Jacket Potato and a Baked Potato?
The short answer to this question is that there is no big difference between these two terms. The jacket potato is a term more commonly used in British English, while baked potato is more commonly used in American English.
Are Microwave-Cooked Jacket Potatoes Healthy?
There are many essential nutrients within potatoes, like amino acids, fibre, vitamins and more. However, how you cook the potato would significantly influence the nutritional profile.
Microwaving the potato could protect the nutrients in the potato and decrease fat content. In other words, microwave-cooked jacket potatoes are healthy.
Can I Eat the Skin of a Jacket Potato?
YES and YES. It’s more than recommended for people to eat the skin of a jacket potato.
The reason lies in that the skin of a jacket potato contains a lot of fibre. About 50 percent of a potato’s fibre comes from the skin. Therefore, you should have the skin of a jacket potato.