Slow Cooker (Crockpot) Jacket Potatoes

We’ve had our slow cooker for years but until recently, we didn’t use it as much as we could have.

We use it to make an overnight chicken stock after every roast chicken dinner: Strip the carcass of meat, throw it into the slow cooker with some water, put it on low and strain in the morning. Done!

Other than that, we used to make the rare stew or curry…

But a few months ago, we started attending a weekly evening exercise class and needed options for a tasty, filling dinner that would be ready to eat as soon as we got home afterwards. We are always exhausted and starving! Since then, we’ve been cooking more stews and curries, and have also been honing our skills at throwing an adhoc selection of ingredients into the pot with growing confidence that the ingredients will all cook in the allotted time, and the volume of liquid will be neither too much nor too little.

Probably the simplest slow cooker dinner of all is jacket potatoes. Of course, we could do these in the conventional oven but that uses far more energy, which seems wasteful to cook a couple of spuds.

Baked-Jacket-Potato-Slow-Cooker-KaveyEats-KFavelle-2014-5164-Pinterest

The potatoes go in around noon.

We buy (or make) our chosen filling and leave it in the fridge until we get home from our class:

  • Our favourite filling is one of the most classic combinations; a pot of sour cream or crème fraiche and lots of grated extra mature cheddar.
  • Lashings of salted butter and home-made smoky paprika coleslaw make another great option.
  • And I’m rather partial to Waitrose smoked mackerel pate or unearthed’s pork or goose rillettes.

By the time we get home, the potatoes are perfectly cooked – the flesh is wonderfully fluffy; the skin is soft (but not crisp).

Slow Cooker (Crockpot) Jacket Potatoes

Cook Time 7 hours

Ingredients

  • 1 medium to large baking potato per person

Instructions

  • Wrap each potato tightly in aluminium foil and place into the slow cooker pot. 

  • Cook on low setting for seven to eight hours. 

  • Remove, unwrap and enjoy while it’s hot! 

Slow-cooker-crockpot-jacket-potatoes-5165 Slow-cooker-crockpot-jacket-potatoes-5166

 

Do you have any other slow cooker favourites to recommend?

I’ll be sharing some of our other quick favourites in coming months.

Please leave a comment - I love hearing from you!
14 Comments to "Slow Cooker (Crockpot) Jacket Potatoes"

  1. Catreia

    How did these turn out please?
    Re compared to microwave plus crispy or tough or soft skins etc
    Thanks!

    Reply
    kaveyeats

    Very fluffy flesh, skins soft not crispy, a little tougher than microwaved skin but the flesh is much better in my opinion… I like them – we’ve done this quite few times.

    Reply
  2. Fiona

    We made these baked potatoes in the slow cooker before but wasn’t impressed with them. I like my skins really crispy though and just didn’t get that with the slow cooker

    Reply
  3. Louise

    Never thought of using the slow cooker for jackets, might have to try 🙂

    Reply
    kaveyeats

    Thanks Louise! Glad I wasn’t only one, had previously thought slow cooker needed liquid!

    Reply
  4. Corina

    It’s funny I’ve just seen this today. I’ve got a new slow cooker and am trying to be a bit more adventurous with it than I was with my old one. Yesterday we had jacket potatoes and I was considering doing them in the slow cooker but then decided not to risk it! I do love crispy skins so I might not like them as much but I will at least try them next time so I know what they’re like. Until recently I too always thought slow cookers needed everything to be submerged in liquid but I’ve discovered you can even do a roast in one!

    Reply
    kaveyeats

    Hi Corina, yes the skins are not crispy, but the flesh is so soft and fluffy! Hope you like! 🙂

    Reply
  5. Kavey

    No, you don’t need any water, Tracey.
    They bake in the heat of the slow cooker, and come out more like oven-cooked, with a lovely texture inside. Make sure you don’t keep lifting the lid to check on them as each time, all the heat is lost and it takes quite a while to get fully hot again, which would make the overall cooking time a lot longer.

    Reply
  6. Kavey at Kavey Eats

    It shouldn’t be much different to the guidelines above, as long as the crockpot is a large enough one to fit the four potatoes in nicely. It may take a little longer to heat up initially but with this long slow cook, it should be fine.

    Reply

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