Mostly Baked

A baked potato is a thing of wonder. Warm and filling, these mainstays of the American diet are a must during the cold winter months. That baked potatoes are infinitely customizable only adds to their universal appeal. Some people shower them with bacon bits; others fill them with cheddar cheese and chives; still others add sauerkraut (vegans, go figure). I'm a purist, though, prefering nothing more than dollop of sour cream and some (real) butter. However you prepare them, baked potatos always satisfy.

Except, that is, when I cook them.

Allow me to explain. Over the part week or two, I've attempted to bake and eat a potato with dinner several times. In my understanding, the proper cooking conditions for a potato are one hour (approximately) at 350 degrees. Admittedly, this is a long time to wait for dinner, but the reward -- a delicious baked tuber -- is, in theory, worth sitting around for 60 minutes with my stomach grumbling.

My principal problem with the baked potato is that I always finish preparing the rest of my dinner way before the potato is done. This presents a culinary dilemma. My choices are either 1) wait for the potato to cook fully and leave the rest of the food sitting idle and growing cold; 2) eat what is finished while it is warm and have the potato by itself at a later time; or 3) take the potato out of the oven, whether it is finished or not (it's not), and eat all components of my dinner at once, as originally intented. Since I'm very hungry at that point, I usually cannot resist pursuing option three.

In an incredible display of willpower, I once managed to hold out until the hour mark, but even then the potato was not soft inside. Armed with this empirical data, I raised the cooking temperature by 50, to 400 degrees, the next time (a few days later). To my surprise, one hour at this elevated temperature did not sufficiently cook the potato either. Oh, the horror!

Now, I'm not dumb. I know what the solution is here: let the potato bake for more than an hour.* But when you are hungry, this is far easier said than done. Unfortunately, I lack the foresight to put the potato in the oven that far ahead of when I want to be eating dinner. This means that the same process -- waiting as long as I can but inevitably pulling the potato out before it is done because I just want to eat, damn it -- will play itself out whenever a baked potato is a part of my dinner.

Can you imagine a worse fate?

* I could also turn the temperature way up, but I don't want a burnt potato.