Did you know you can make slow cooker baked potatoes? Sometimes your oven may be full, or maybe you don’t want to heat up your oven to make a baked potato. There is a solution for you, you can make baked potatoes in a slow cooker.
Why Make Crock Pot Baked Potatoes?
You might wonder why you should make baked potatoes in a crock pot. There are times when you don’t want to heat up your kitchen, or perhaps it’s the holidays, and the oven is already full. What do you do when you still want baked potatoes? You can grab the crock pot and make them in the slow cooker. It is easy to make them outside of the oven. I must confess, sometimes when my kitchen is full cooking up a holiday meal, I have even used the slow cooker to cook up potatoes for mashed potatoes. This way I saved room on my stove/oven, and still had cooked potatoes.
I would urge you to do one thing when trying to determine how long to cook your potatoes. Potatoes come in all sorts of sizes and weights. When I bake potatoes in my slow cooker I like to pick uniformly sized potatoes. We all know you can get them in tiny bite-sized chunks or you can get them all of the ways up to potatoes that are as big as a football. When I bake potatoes in the slow cooker I like to use a smaller potato, I like to use potatoes that are about 6 ounces. Those are as long as your palm is wide. I have even been known to weigh the potatoes to make sure they weigh close to each other. I like to cook them when they are about 6 to 8 ounces.
How long to cook potatoes in the slow cooker?
When using the slow cooker, you have two options. You can cook the potatoes on high, or you can cook them on low.
On High – 4 to 4 1/2 hours
On Low – 6 to 6 1/2 hours
It will take some time to cook your potatoes, but all food takes awhile in your slow cooker, so it is best to plan ahead when cooking these in the slow cooker. I hope you give this a try soon!
Want to try more potato recipes?
Parmesan Roasted Potatoes
Easy Oven Roasted Potatoes
Outback Steakhouse Baked Potato
Slow Cooker Baked Potatoes
Ingredients
- 4 potatoes
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- kosher salt
Instructions
- Wash the potatoes and pat them dry. Do not poke the potatoes. (Only when potatoes are overcooked do they explode). Drizzle olive oil over the potatoes. Sprinkle Kosher salt over the potatoes. Determine if you are going to cook on low or high. High temperature the cooking time is 4 to 4 1/2 hours, Low temperature requires 6 1/2 to 7 hours.
Robert Hamilton says
Hi Stephanie,
Over the years, Im sure you have perfected plenty of copykat recipes. Would you mind sharing a few of your least favorite copykat attempts? This is obviously just for fun. And if you dont mind, could you explain what went wrong? Thanks so much and Happy New Year!
Stephanie says
I will try to do a blog post soon about epic failures 😉 There have been more than a few.
Katie says
I would like to make these using the instant pot. Have you tried it? If so, how long should I cook them?
Stephanie says
If you use the instant pot as the slow cooker I would cook it for the same amount of time. I have never cooked whole potatoes in the instant pot. As potatoes explode when they are overcooked, I would be a little intimated in trying to “bake” potatoes under pressure.
Sandrea says
Ive cook potatoes in the Instant pot numerous times. They are excellant .. usually 15 minutes on rack with one cup Water. Course cooking time depends on the size of the potatoe.
ruthie says
I’m guessing that cooking in the slow cooker gives you a bit of a crispy skin. If so, wouldn’t the water required by the Instant Pot kind of defeat the purpose. Faster but no crispy outsides???
Grace says
In a 6qt slow cooker can I do more than 4 potatoes? Also, I have a smaller slow cooker I believe 3qt do you think for only 2 potatoes that one would be a good size or do I need to use the larger one? Thanks
Stephanie says
You can add several potatoes to the slow cooker. You can be pretty flexible, in the number of potatoes that you put in there. The cooking time/technique does not change.