Puncture your potatoes before baking to prevent messy explosions.
Baked potatoes are a simple and comforting favorite -- the sort of food that even the fussiest of eaters can enjoy. While a baked potato is typically light and fluffy inside a crisp skin, some prefer them with the skin soft, resulting from a foil wrapper. Whether you wrap them in foil or not, you need to pierce the potato several times with a fork, paring knife or skewer, so steam can escape as the potato bakes. Otherwise, the potato can explode in your oven, leaving you with a tedious cleanup chore.
Instructions
1. Turn off the oven. Remove the remaining potatoes from your oven; leave the oven door open so the heat can dissipate. Finish cooking your potatoes in the microwave.
2. Take out the wire racks, once they're cool, and set them near your sink. Use a kitchen brush or whisk broom to brush out as much loose potato from the oven as you can. Use a wooden spoon or rigid plastic spatula to scrape away as much crusted-on potato as possible.
3. Sponge away as much potato as you can with a hot, damp sponge or scrubbing pad. Sponge the surfaces again, leaving any remaining potato residue as damp as possible. Dust the affected areas with baking soda, which will serve as a gentle abrasive.
4. Leave the potato residues to soften in the cooled oven for 30 to 60 minutes, dampening the crusted areas periodically if they dry out. If the door and racks of also have exploded potato on them, use the same techniques to clean those while you're waiting for the oven. Use a nylon scrubbing pad to clean without damaging the surface.
5. Scrub out the inner surfaces of the oven, removing the softened potatoes with hot water and a scrubbing pad. When you've finished, remove and replace the foil liner at the bottom of your oven. If you have no foil liner, wipe out the bottom to remove the debris from the cleaning process.
6. Replace the , and resume normal use of your oven.
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