When Your Baked Potato Hits This Temperature, It's Done

An inexpensive, tasty meal is something everyone loves, and potatoes are here to please. Whether mashed, fried, or baked, there are tons of ways to enjoy a spud. Baked potatoes are particularly easy, seeing as they only involve a single ingredient plus a little salt. One of many mistakes people make with baked potatoes is not cooking them all the way through. So, how do you know if your tater is ready to eat?

When baking a potato, the oven should be heated to anywhere from 375 to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. After an hour, give your potato a check with a thermometer to see what the internal temperature is. For a successful baked potato, the very thickest part of the potato should read roughly 210 degrees. Less means it will still be a little raw, while more will make your potato wrinkly.

Beyond acquiring a pleasing texture, there are a few reasons you want to hit this all-important mark. Cooking potatoes breaks down the starches they contain, which means they'll be easier on your digestive system. Raw potatoes are likely to give you bad gas and tummy trouble. They are also more likely to have harmful bacteria, so it's best to heed this temperature standard.

There are many ways to effectively bake a potato, with some being quicker than others. This means there's no one set amount of time needed to get the right internal temperature. In an oven (the traditional way), potatoes will finish cooking in about an hour, though it could be a little longer for jumbo-sized spuds. If you wrap them completely in foil, you might get your potato done in as little as 40 minutes.

Alternative methods for baking a potato  can be either faster or slower. In a microwave, you can bake a potato for just five minutes, flip it, and give it another five minutes before it should be done. In an air fryer at 400 degrees, you should expect  a 30 to 50 minute wait, depending on the size. If you're looking to set it and forget it, baking a potato in a slow cooker can take over four hours.

Let's say you don't have a thermometer, though. Luckily, there are a few signs that you've probably got a perfect potato on your hands. If you stick a fork in, it should slide in without effort all the way to the center, and pull out just as easily. You can also squeeze the spud with oven mitts to see if it feels soft all the way through. The skin should appear lightly crisped and there should be fragrant steam coming out through the cracks. If your potato passes these tests, all you have to do is cut it open, butter it up, and add whatever fun baked potato toppings your heart desires.