I Tried Alton Brown’s Baked Potato and It’s as Good as the Internet Says

Many of us have been trusting the Food Network chefs—from Rachael Ray to Bobby Flay and, of course, Ina Garten—for as long as we’ve been home cooks. And with each of those chefs comes a certain specialty that we’ve learned from them. The Pioneer Woman taught us about good ol’ comfort cooking; the Barefoot Contessa about how to elevate even a store-bought dessert; and Guy Fieri about the joys of flavor-packed food. 

However, chef Alton Brown didn’t just show us how to make his favorite dishes, but he made sure we learned exactly what made those recipes so good: science. On “Good Eats,” Brown was basically the Bill Nye of the Food Network. And, now, Brown has brought his love of food science to a new channel: TikTok.

How To Make Alton Brown’s Baked Potato

Recently, the chef went viral for teaching the internet how to make the perfect crispy-on-the-outside, fluffy-on-the-inside baked potato. It’s an incredibly basic recipe, yet Brown has amassed more than 4.5 million views for his science-backed technique.

Much like he did on his show, Brown begins the video by describing the chemical makeup of a potato and its starches. He explains that to get the perfect fluffy potato, you need to activate the amylose starches, rather than the amylopectin starches that can cause the inside to be stringy. This requires time and low heat.

So, according to Brown, the perfect baked potato requires two bakes. One, lengthy 1-hour cook at 300 degrees F (150 degrees C) for fluffiness, followed by a shorter, hotter bake at 400 degrees F (200 degrees C) to achieve the crispy exterior. 

But first, you’ll need to wash the potato—a Russet potato, to be exact—then dry and poke holes all the way around. 

Poking holes allows steam to escape during cooking, according to Brown. “Skip this and the texture will be dense.”

Then, lightly oil the potato and season it with 1/2 teaspoon of Kosher salt before tucking it into the oven, directly on the rack, for the first hour of baking. After the first bit of cooking, remove the spud from the oven and oil it up again. Brown then recommends cooking the potato for just 10 minutes at 400 degrees F to get crispy skin, “which I think is the best part,” he says. 

But, Brown doesn’t stop there with the technique. Once the baked potato is out of the oven for good, he instructs viewers not to use a knife to split it open. Instead, he perforates the potato with a fork, then squeezes the ends to pop open the baked potato. It makes me wonder how he’d feel about Martha Stewart’s technique of smashing the potato on the table to split it open. 

Finally, Brown adds his preferred toppings (butter, sour cream, and chives) to create a perfectly baked potato that has now been recreated by hundreds of people all across the internet. I tried the method and here is my honest review.

My Honest Review of Alton Brown’s Baked Potato

Brown’s baked potato recipe is quite similar to our Perfect Baked Potato, which is baked low-and-slow for 90 minutes at 300 degrees F. That’s a recipe I use occasionally, however, I’ll be honest—I’m a firm believer in “baking” your potatoes in the microwave. It’s a super-quick way to get a baked potato on the table. Sure, it might not be the fluffiest, and the skin won’t crisp up the same way as the oven, but if you’re just adding butter, sour cream, or my favorite Heinz Baked Beans, then does it really matter? 

But, I practiced patience with Brown’s baked potato recipe—and, I’ll admit it, it was worth the wait. 

The interior was incredibly fluffy—so much so that I took a few bites even before adding my toppings. While I’m not one to usually eat the skin of a baked potato, I did take a few nibbles and the exterior had a beautifully crisp bite. 

So, if you do enjoy the entire potato, Brown’s method is certainly for you. Otherwise, would I wait an hour and 10 minutes for a baked potato every time? Probably not when the microwave is such a great option and I’m just going to doctor the potato up anyway. But, on special occasions when I want a simple buttered baked potato to be the star, I’ll absolutely use Brown’s technique.