jacket potato

Quite possibly the ultimate snack food. Baked potatoes split open and filled with all manner of warm creamy goodness - even non-creamy kinds, like cheese, beans, curry, sausages, ju-jubes, hairballs, dead babies, cement, old sticky jizz or whatever you want in it.

(Well, maybe not those last few things...)

A potato baked in its skin ('jacket'). I believe this is a Britishism, or whatever the word is. In the U.S. this would be called a baked potato. You get all of the nutrients from the skin, plus texture - A jacket potato can be eaten with all kinds of fatty toppings, like butter or sour cream. Meat-eating people may add bacon. Others might add cheese.

What nutrients are in the skin? From what i can tell, calcium, potassium and fiber figure among them. I just eat it with the skin for the texture and the pop/tear when the skin breaks.

This definition was a chatterbox request.

If you rub a little olive oil on the skin, and then roll it in salt (rock or flaked salt, ideally) before you bake it, the skin becomes extremely crunchy-delicious. (Just wash and dry the potato well before oiling it.)

Stab it a few times with a knife or a skewer, then bake your big fat potato in a hot oven for at least an hour, till the inside becomes fluffy and powdery. The best way to open it up is to wrap it in a tea towel and give it a good thump with your fist so that it bursts its skin. Then, go ahead and mix in your high-fat treats. Yum.

New potatoes do not bake well. You need a good floury (rather than waxy) spud with a decent thick skin.

Microwaved jacket potatoes are not nice. The skin stays thin and weedy. Bake yer tatties. Oh, and if a cafe or a pub is trying to sell you a jacket potato, it's almost certainly microwaved. They'd brag about it if it was really baked.