Baked potatoes will have perfectly crispy skins if you coat them with two common ingredients, according to a top chef. A British comfort-food staple, the humble jacket potato has been a popular choice for nearly 200 years, but achieving that perfectly crispy skin is not always easy.
The Chef's Secret
Chef Will Murray, who honed his skills at the two-Michelin-starred Dinner by Heston Blumenthal in Mayfair and now co-runs London restaurants Fallow, Roe and FOWL, has unveiled his "best tip" for the perfect jacket potato. Speaking exclusively, he emphasised the importance of using the right potato.
"Yeah, so the best tip for baked potato is actually that you need to use the right potato. So if you're using a waxy potato, when it bakes, there's too high a sugar and starch content in there, so it'll be gluey by the time it's finished," Murray explained.
He recommends: "So the best potato to use in the UK is a Maris Piper and you wanna...or a King Edward. King Edward's also really good, so those two are really good for it. So you want a low-sugar sort of high-starch potato, so you basically... I cover it all over with olive oil and flaky salt."
Preparation Tips
Murray added: "And then you get all the texture of like the crispy potato skin. And then always allow it to steam. So like, open it up before you serve it. And what will happen is that moisture will evaporate, and then you can just start to lightly fluff it up."
This advice follows Murray's revelation of a supermarket curry sauce he rates as "banging" — surprisingly not Patak's or Sharwood's, but a specialist product from a celebrated Mayfair Indian restaurant.
Home Cooking Habits
Murray confessed that home meals are "pretty bog standard", and he likes a combination of different brands, from Tesco to London charcuterie Cobble Lane Cure. With three young kids, he shops at Tesco for standard fare. At weekends, he might choose a "nice piece of meat" and enjoys charcuterie from Cobble Lane Cure. His kids prefer standard items like Heck sausages and De Cecco pasta.
Regarding curry, Murray is fond of Gymkhana curry sauces, calling them "banging."
