Posted by Bruce Bilmes and Sue Boyle
, February 25, 2009 23:17
As far as we’re concerned, you can keep your modern microwaved potatoes topped with broccoli and cheese sauce, or pizza sauce and mozzarella, or mushrooms and spinach, or barbecue (well, maybe we’ll take that barbecue-stuffed potato). We like a russet baked naked in a real oven, with a crisp skin hiding a dry and flaky interior. Good as is, even better sopped with some combination of salt, pepper, butter, and/or sour cream. In the recent Roadfood.com poll, butter was the clear favorite traditional topping for baked spuds.
We always read Jane and Michael Stern’s description of one particular baked potato with wonderment and lust: the one that was once (and maybe still is) served at Stubby’s Hik-Ry Pit Bar-B-Q in Hot Springs, AR. We quote from their classic Roadfood and Goodfood:
The baked potato epitomizes all that is good about Stubby’s. For one thing, it’s gigantic. For another, it’s cooked in the pit, untouched by the hateful foil plague. What happens when a potato is cooked in this slow way is the skin absorbs all the smoke and turns tough. If you don’t fancy potato skins, you won’t like it. But if you enjoy a good flavorful chaw, it’s a memorable delicacy. The inside of this spud is pure white creamy fluff. And finally, the corker—Stubby’s knockout punch: the server cuts open the potato, and as steam escapes, he dollops on two full-sized ice cream scoops’ worth of butter.
