Pete C. wrote:

>>> You can certainly cook a potato in the microwave and get the same result
>>> as famous industrial chain food restaurants but it isn't a baked potato.
>>>
>> This is the main point - too many people consider any large, whole,
>> cooked potato to be "baked" when a microwaved potato is in fact steamed.
>
> A microwaved potato is no more steamed than a baked one. In both cases
> the heat introduced produces some internal steam.

I think there is a difference. If you bake a potato by simply putting it
on the oven rack the skin will develop crispness and there will be some
browning and the skin will have a slightly nutty flavor. If you prepare
a restaurant style potato as found in "famous chain places" you would
wrap it in AL foil which retains the moisture and steams the potato.
There is no browning or change of skin texture. If you microwave a
potato you get the same result as wrapping in foil likely because the
quick cooking doesn't liberate the moisture and lack of infrared for
crisping.


Of course this assumes that you have enough energy and time left after
washing the potatoes...



>
>> Even so, when I have been in a hurry for a real baked potato, I have
>> found that a few minutes in the microwave followed by finishing in the
>> oven will cut your cooking time in half and give a result that is hard
>> to tell from the real thing.
>
> That technique certainly works, indeed very often my use of the
> microwave it to trim cooking time of an ingredient or two, like nuking
> diced green peppers for a couple minutes to sync them with the rest of
> the dish they are going in.