Baked Potatoes

Just 5 minutes of fuel!

Whaaaaaaat? Potatoes?

Surely as a wannabe food blogger I should be focusing on fancy foods and glorious plates that I can dot around on my Instagram posts for the delectation of my zillions of followers? PMSL

Let's get something straight ..

I am a Mum - a busy Mum - a busy frugal single Mum who is focused on feeding her kids without busting her budget!

And baked potatoes - cos today an idiot of a Tory politician (naming no names) thought they would be clever about pointing out that baked potatoes are good cheap food for struggling families! 

Not sure she lives in the real world!

TBH - I guess she has never had to consider the cost of whacking on an oven and actually cooking the blasted things has she? 

The reality is that now (especially with the £20 per week cut to Universal Credit) that the whole ”Eat or Heat” debate has never been so relevant. If you can afford to buy food - can you afford to cook it?

Now I know that potatoes are cheap - and reduced cuts of tough meat can be found at the end of the day .. but if you can’t afford the fuel to cook them to palatable tenderness then frankly a skint mum is going to resort to whatever will heat up quickest. Bellies full of crappy processed foods trump empty bellies and a fridge full of stuff you can’t afford to cook.

Cooking from scratch soon becomes the privilege of the affluent - those who post images of their sourdough starter, their artisan bread maker goods, their slow cooker tagines, and their Instapot curries. 

If you are on a bare-bones budget - how can you aspire to acquire those lovely gadgets that make “cooking for yourself” so easy to achieve?

But babies still need to be fed - and budgets still need to balance! 

I Have a Solution!

Step in my Thermal Cooking Bag! An old technique that relies on residual retained heat to cook foods without a huge amount of fuel input. Think of it as a slow cooker without a plug!  

The thing is - there are not loads of recipes kicking around for this very simple strategy .. so I thought I would experiment a while as I go and gather the materials to make more of these Thermal Cooking Bags to give away to local friends and families who will appreciate them.

As an act of supreme pettiness - today I am experimenting on how to cook “baked” potatoes using the minimum of fuel possible. 

So - four baking potatoes from my cupboard (These four were from my LIDL £1.50 box this week along with some other veggies)

Scrubbed clean under a cold running tap! 

Into my pot - a cast-iron casserole pot that I got from a Charity Shop for £3.00 as the enamel is a little chipped on the outside of the lid. It’s heavy and should retain the heat very well. 

Cover with boiling water - I boiled the kettle to make a cup of tea and used the rest to cover my potatoes. 

Up the boil for 5 minutes with the lid on.

Lifted into my Thermal Cooking bag and tied up tight! My bag is filled with polystyrene pellets from an old bean bag and the rest made from an old duvet cover .. but if you’d like to play along I suggest a pillow in the bottom of a cardboard box and then tightly surround and cover the pot with layers of blankets/quilts / old clean clothing.

Don’t get me wrong - I love my Thermal Cooking Bag cos I can just throw it in the wash when it needs freshening up but if you play around you can probably cobble something together that works with what you have to hand. 

Now - leave it alone for 4 hours at least - letting the retained heat slowly cook through the potatoes so that they can become soft and edible. 

Now - tested the temperature after 4 hours - but I can tell you the lid was Hot! Hot! Hot! 

Drained the potatoes and popped them back into the pot so that they could steam and dry out their skins... I can tell you that the boys were hovering around curious to find out if just five minutes on the stovetop could soften these big potatoes!

Now - soft skins or crispy is always the debate when it comes to baked potatoes in our house. One likes soft and two like crispy... So if you like a crispy potato you are going to have to rub your spud with a little oil, sprinkle it with some salt, and crisp it up under the grill! 

We didn’t bother - just cut them up, stuffed them full, and slid them onto a plate with a side salad

And they were cooked - perfectly tender all the way through, not waterlogged as I thought they might be (but I suppose they come with their own protective jacket on)

But they were hot, they were cheap and they were filling .. but even better they were cooked with just five minutes of gas heat on one ring and fed a hungry family of three.

So this afternoon I am back at my desk building a membership site and both boys are hard at work on academic stuff … no-one (not even the hollow-legged teen has come looking for a snack at all this afternoon! 

So - I call that Score One for the Thermal Cooking Bag!