Slow Cooker Baked Potato

I haven't used my slow cooker for a few months since I moved in August, so was inspired by the Slow Cooker Challenge on Farmersgirl Kitchen to dig it out. Janice, aka Farmersgirl, has an open theme this month so I had a look around on other blogs to find something that would be fairly easy. I came across a couple of recipes for jacket potatoes done in the slow cooker - it never occured to me to bake them like that. Jacket potatoes take a good 1-2 hours in the oven depending on size (I like to choose the biggest potato I can find) and in a slow cooker they take pretty much all day: about 4 hours on the high setting, or up to 8 hours on the slow setting, which the other bloggers recommended. However, I wanted a baked potato for lunch and wasn't getting up that early in the morning, so I did mine on the high setting.

One useful tip I came across was to wad up little balls of tin foil and place them on the bottom of the slow cooker, and the potato (wrapped in foil) on top. This stops the bottom of the potato from being in contact with the base of the slow cooker and developing a brown spot.

I rubbed the potato with a little oil before I wrapped it in foil but that was all I needed to do. Four hours later I had a beautifully soft potato. The skin didn't crisp up which I do quite like, but then sometimes in the oven I find the skin crisps too much and is inedible (I really enjoy the skin of a baked potato though I know a lot of people don't).

I was in the mood for a sour cream and chive filling but didn't have any sour cream or any chives. Instead, I had a little pot of blue cheese salad dressing so I mixed some of that with a spoonful of mayonnaise and two spoonfuls of fat free natural yogurt, and added some chopped parsley (the only fresh herb I had) on top. It tasted lovely!

I wouldn't normally bake a jacket potato in the slow cooker over doing it in the oven if I was at home, but the beauty of the slow cooker is that you can put it on then go out all day. So if you want a baked potato with your dinner but don't want to wait an hour or more after you get home from work (if like me you aren't home until 7pm) rather than having to do it in the microwave I would definitely recommend doing it in the slow cooker. And the blue cheese and parsley filling was very tasty!

As already mentioned, I'm sending this to the Slow Cooker Challenge, hosted by Janice at Farmersgirl Kitchen.

Using a slow cooker is also more economical than using the oven and potatoes are cheap as chips (literally) so I am sending this to Credit Crunch Munch, the thrifty cooking challenge hosted by Hannah at A New Addition on behalf of Helen at Fuss Free Flavours and Camilla at Fab Food 4 All.