What's The Best Temperature Range For Baked Potatoes?

Baking a potato is neither an art nor a science, because the process really is simple enough that a preschooler could do it without much trouble — well, apart from the dangers inherent in having a small child anywhere near a hot stove, that is. (Let us make this perfectly clear: We do not endorse outsourcing any cooking tasks to young kids! It's just a figure of speech.) The reason potato-baking is a no-brainer is because there's such a wide range of temperatures permissible ... seriously, anything between 300 and 450 degrees Fahrenheit.

Our simple baked potato recipe uses the high heat method; so, at 450 degrees Fahrenheit, a large russet potato should be done in about an hour or so (plus whatever amount of time it takes to preheat the oven). If you've got an extra half hour on your hands, you could also bake the same type of potato at 300 degrees Fahrenheit for 90 minutes. Baby potatoes, however, will cook in less time. At 400 degrees Fahrenheit, they should be done in under half an hour.

How can you bake a potato without an oven? Technically, you're still baking it if you use an air fryer. Although the name implies that this appliance will "fry" your food (which does work well for marketing purposes), an air fryer is really a miniature convection oven. Our air fryer baked potato recipe calls for cooking the potatoes at 400 degrees Fahrenheit for 45 minutes, so if you opt for this method, you're saving yourself a little bit of time as well as using less power than if you'd used the oven. Other air fryer recipes call for cooking the potatoes at 350 degrees Fahrenheit, and potatoes will still cook if you set the temperature as low as 300 degrees Fahrenheit, though it may take a bit longer.

If time is of the essence, one of the fastest ways to cook a potato is by using the microwave. This may or may not be considered baking, since the term baking implies dry heat while microwaves use moist heat as well. Still, a microwaved potato looks like, tastes like, and has much the same texture as one cooked in an oven. We can't provide a temperature range for this appliance, however, since microwaves measure heat in wattage, not degrees. While they typically put out less heat than conventional ovens, they cook much more quickly, and a potato can go from raw to baked in 10 minutes.