How to Eat at Home on the Go Week 2 - Baked Potatoes

Welcome to the second week of How to Eat at Home on the Go, where I share the tips, tricks and recipes I use to feed my family at home even when we are on the go.  You can check out Week 1 to see how we got started.   

This week I am sharing my Baked Potato tips.  My family loves baked potatoes, especially in the fall, however, spending hours baking potatoes in the oven does not fit our schedule very often.  In my quest to eat at home more and out less, I tried making my "baked" potatoes in the crockpot.  SUCCESS!! 

I use the super large baking potatoes, wrap them in foil and place in my slow cooker.  I do this at night before going to bed.  I then leave a sweet note for my 7 year old daughter to "cook" dinner when she gets home from school at 2:30, asking her to turn on the slow cooker on HIGH.  Since I am cooking them on HIGH, the bottom potatoes can get hard on the bottom, so when I get home at 5:00 I rotate the potatoes, placing those that were on the top on the bottom and the bottom ones on the top.  This allows for even cooking at high temperatures.  By using this process, our potatoes cook from 2:30 - 8:30 when we get home from football practice. 

How can you make this work for you?  If you don't want to eat in the middle of the night like we do, just cook your potatoes on LOW for about 10 hours and you will have delicious baked potatoes.  If you are cooking on LOW you do not have to rotate the potatoes unless your slow cooker cooks really hot. 

I set out the potatoes with cheddar cheese, diced ham (which I keep in portioned out in the freezer), butter, sour cream and ranch dressing.  My family then selects their favorite toppings and makes their own potato.  With miminal effort on my part, we have a quick week night meal with out resorting to a drive thru. 

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