Martha Stewart Dropped The Ultimate Hack For Baked Potatoes

Potatoes are a go-to staple that are both versatile and satisfying. Turn them into a complete meal with butter, cheese, broccoli, sour cream, bacon, or whatever topping gets you salivating. Serve them on the side. In any manner, potatoes are amazing. Per the BBC, potatoes have been around for at least 8,000 years and counting. These vegetables are considered the fourth most important crop the world produces with only rice, wheat, and maize besting this hearty ingredient.

But when it comes to cooking these beloved taters, they are not without their perils. According to Bon Appétit, from under baking to using the wrong kind of spuds and turning to the microwave rather than being patient and cooking them properly in the oven, you can definitely hit a speed bump when it comes to cooking your spuds. Luckily, the domestic goddess of all domestic goddesses, Martha Stewart, has the ultimate hack that will change your baked potatoes.

Per a video posted on Stewart's TikTok account, if you want fluffy and delicious baked potatoes, you are going to want to use one of her favorite tricks to get them just so. According to Stewart's website, she is a true fan and eats these totally tubular tubers on a regular basis for lunch. But what's Stewart's trick?

In Martha Stewart's TikTok video, which has over 30 thousand likes and 273 thousand views, the celebrity cook says that, for the "ultimate fluffy potatoes," you need to bake your potatoes and then smash them. Demonstrating her surprising technique, she begins by taking a pointed knife to break the skin of a warm potato before she smashes the cut side straight down on the counter. Stewart proclaims the potato looks like "snow." Then, she tops it with a dollop of butter, a little creme fraiche, and a heaping spoonful of roe caviar. 

The baked and smashed potato looks pretty tasty, and her fans agree. One wrote, "This is NEXT LEVEL baked potatos... Caviar? Cream Fraiche? I gotta step my game up!" Meanwhile, another humorously responded, "You forgot the ketchup."

What's the best potato to use when making these baked smashed potatoes? According to her website, Russets are the "it" potato for this job, noting the greater amount of starch it contains makes for that soft, lovely bite you hope for with a baked potato. However, Stewart shared in an Instagram post, "Generally we do not bake large Yukon gold potatoes but yesterday I mixed in a couple with some big Idaho spuds and roasted them slowly at 325 for an hour and a half...I loved the Yukon gold!" So, the answer is, to use what you like now that you know how Stewart really eats her potatoes.