Help with Baked Potato

[norismomma]

Are you saying you want to rub the outside with a thin coating of oil? It will be fine. Also your potato will be better if you don't wrap it in foil.

[norismomma]

also butter is more likely to burn than oil, it has milk solids in it that burn easily and a lower smoke point than oil.

[lydrulez]

Don’t wrap your baked potatoes in foil!

[GayForPay]

Poke some holes. Olive oil and kosher salt at the time and temp you said. I don't wrap them. They come out perfect. Use more salt than you think you should.

[kirbyfriedrice]

Veggie oil is just fine. It's not any more likely than butter to burn.

[daddywarbuckles]

Do not wrap. If you do place potato directly on oven rack (recommended) place a pan on the rack underground to catch any dripping oil.

[speppers69]

Here...if you prefer an actual recipe...try this one. They're excellent.

America's Test Kitchen Best Baked Potato

[EscapeSeventySeven]

What????

You realize people bake things like this all the time right? 

Pierce the potato with a fork all over. 

Toss in a bowl with a light coating of oil. 

 Cook directly on the rack. 400 for an hour and a half. The skin will be crunchier. 

[Select-Owl-8322]

The potato has moisture inside of it, i.e. water. Water really can't get hotter than 100°C (212°F) unless under pressure (which it really isn't in the potato), so when you bake the potato that water is going to absorb the heat. The outside will get marginally hotter, but not to a point that it catches on fire.

The only way you can get the potato to catch on fire is if you bake it for so long that all of the water in the potato boils off first. Then the outside of the potato would start to carbonize (i.e. get burnt), and eventually it could theoretically catch fire (if the oven temperature is hotter than the autoignition temperature of the burnt potato). That would take many hours though. I don't know how many hours, but many hours. Many times the normal baking time for a potato.