Air-Fryer Baked Potato

In my potato-centric worldview, there are two types of people: the pessimists, who view a basic baked spud as a bland and boring waste of carbohydrates, and the optimists, like myself, who view the baked potato as one of life’s greatest culinary joys. The potato-enthusiasts understand that a properly baked potato can stand on its own with just a bit of butter as a stellar side, but is also a perfect blank canvas for heaping with toppings like sour cream, chives, bacon, all the cheese you can handle, or whatever creative direction you choose to take with your baked potato. (I personally love gouda with sautéed mushrooms and garlic and a sprinkle of tarragon).

But to fully appreciate the loaded baked potato experience or even to simply savor an unloaded baked potato, the potato needs to be fully tender with a uniformly fluffy interior encased in properly crisped skin and well seasoned throughout so that every bite is delicious. The air fryer is the perfect way to create this ideal baked potato, and it does it much faster than a conventional oven too. With no need to preheat, a typical air fryer takes just 40 minutes to bake two fluffy, tender potatoes vs. over 20 minutes preheating time and about an hour cooking time in a conventional oven. Not only do you not have to wait for the air fryer to preheat, you also avoid heating up the whole oven for just two potatoes. The high heat and constant air flow of the air fryer also guarantees the skin crisps while the interior bakes evenly.

There are a few key steps to baking perfect potatoes in your air fryer—many of which overlap with the prep and finishing technique that Daniel has already discussed at length in his guide for how to bake the ultimate baked potato. Here’s a brief breakdown.

Tips for Getting Perfect Baked Potatoes in the Air Fryer

Puncture your potatoes: Jabbing your potatoes with a sharp knife or fork is more than just a great form of anger management—it also allows some steam and excess moisture to escape from the inside of the potatoes as they are cooking, which results in a drier and fluffier interior once cooked. It also eliminates the small risk of the steam building up inside the potato and causing it to explode (I admit that an exploding potato sounds kind of cool, but if you’ve ever cleaned potato fragments out of the inside of your oven, you know it’s not a great thing). 

Oil and season your potatoes before cooking: Rubbing the potatoes with oil before baking turns the skin pleasantly crisp when baked, rather than leathery and tough. Simply use your hands to rub it all over, or you can be fancy like me and use a pastry brush for an even coating. Even when scrubbed thoroughly, potato skins still have an earthy taste because, well, they grow in the earth! I find that a light sprinkle of salt and pepper over the oiled skin seasons the exterior to cover up any unwanted lingering earthy flavors once baked.

Don’t preheat the air fryer but do bake at a high temperature: We found in side-by-side testing that preheating the air fryer made no difference in the final texture or cook time of the potato. So save yourself the five minutes of waiting for your air fryer to preheat. In our tests, we found that cooking the potatoes at 400℉ guaranteed the crisp skin we wanted, so don’t be afraid to crank up the heat on your air fryer. 

Rest your potatoes: Remember the childhood game of hot potato where you’d pretend a ball was a steaming hot potato burning your fingers, and you needed to throw it as fast as you could? Well, we’re not playing that game here in real life. Avoid burning your fingers and just let the potatoes sit on a plate for a few minutes once they’re done cooking. They’ll still be plenty hot and steamy to enjoy, but not burn-the-skin-of-your-fingers level hot. Just make sure to not let the potatoes sit too long before slicing into them. As they cool the remaining steam inside the baked potato will turn back into water and turn the potatoes wet and gummy inside.

Butter and season the potatoes thoroughly after baking: This is Daniel’s technique for ensuring every bite of the potato is properly seasoned, and it’s worth the time. Once the potatoes are cool enough to handle, split each potato open from end to end and use a spoon to scoop the flesh into a bowl, then mix butter, salt, and pepper into the flesh before scooping the mixture back into the potato skins. 

If this seems a bit fussy to you, you can technically skip this step and just cut open the potatoes and butter and season the cut tops of the flesh and mash it with a fork right in its skin, but they won’t be perfectly seasoned, and if you’ve just spent 40 minutes waiting for perfectly fluffy baked potatoes, don’t you want to spend the two extra minutes to season them properly? The answer is yes. I’m telling you to scoop and mash and reload.

Your gorgeous potato canvas is now properly prepped and ready to eat or top with fixings. Add whatever you want, such as the classics of sour cream, cheese, bacon bits, and chives, or experiment with whatever flavor combinations strike your fancy. I’d venture to say the final result is great enough to turn anyone into a baked potato devotee.