Dolly Parton Cracked the Code to Baked Potatoes With Super Crispy Skin

Now that the queen of country music has announced her retirement from touring, our beloved Dolly Parton has more time to focus on one of her other passions: cooking! It shouldn't shock you to know we love Dolly's soulful food and for every iconic song, there's an iconic Dolly recipe to match. From baked beans and coleslaw, to cornbread and potato salad, Dolly knows her way around our favorite foods.

Lucky for all of us, Doly and her sister Rachel Parton George recently dropped a new cookbook, called Good Lookin’ Cookin’. When we were flipping through the delicious recipes one in particular jumped out at me: the baked potato. In the recipe, the cooking-loving sisters share their secrets to the best-ever baked potato and I knew I had to make it immediately.

Get the recipe: Dolly Parton's Baked Potato

Ingredients for Dolly Parton’s Baked Potato

Now this recipe is more about the method more than it is about the ingredients. To bake your potato like Dolly does, all you’ll need is a baked potato plus whatever fixings you want to dress it up with. For my baked potato, I used salt, butter, shredded cheese, sour cream, chives and I made bacon bits using crunchy bacon.

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How to Make Dolly Parton’s Baked Potato

Whatever you thought you knew about baking a potato, throw it out the window. Well, that’s if you want your potato to have a nice crispy skin. Dolly doesn't poke holes in the spuds or wrap them in foil. All she does is wash the potatoes and place them directly on the oven rack. Why? She says this method gives you the crispiest baked potato skin.

Preheat your oven to 450°, wash your potatoes, then put them on the rack until they're soft and tender on the inside, which should take 50 minutes to an hour. That’s it! Now, just split open your potato and add your toppings.

Related: Dolly Parton's Chicken and Dumplings Recipe

What I Thought of Dolly Parton’s Baked Potato

Like me, you may come from the baked potato school of poking holes in the potato, rubbing it in butter, and then wrapping it in foil before throwing it in the oven. But Dolly’s method does away with all of that. The goal here is to let the dry heat from the oven cook the potato and crisp the skin—and that goal is accomplished.

I found the skin of Dolly’s baked potato to be super crispy as intended. The inside of the potato, though, wasn't light and fluffy and more so undercooked even after an hour of sitting in the oven. But Queen Dolly can never do any wrong so let’s blame me. Maybe I should have left it in the oven longer or heck, maybe it’s time for me to upgrade to a convection oven. This would not be my preferred method of cooking a potato, but it's worth giving a shot if you want to change your baked potato methods.

Related: Dolly Parton's Famous Cream of Vegetable Soup

Tip for Making Dolly Parton’s Baked Potato

? Oven temperatures and potato sizes vary, so you might need to bake your potatoes for longer than an hour. Test the potatoes to make sure they're tender all the way through. If they're not, give them a few more minutes and check again.

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Related: I Made Dolly Parton's Famous 3-Ingredient Cake from Steel Magnolias