Crockpot "Baked" Potatoes

I don't know about you, but the crockpot is hands down one of my favorite kitchen appliances. I use almost every day to cook supper. Who has time to stand over a stove and cook when you can throw all the ingredients together in 5-10 minutes and have a lovely supper ready when hubby gets home? Kudos to you if you can do that. I'm not in that stage of life anymore, but I'm LOVIN' the freedom the crockpot gives me.

One of my new favorites is making a HUGE batch of baked potatoes. Yes. Baked potatoes. In. The. Crockpot. 

OK, so maybe I'm completely behind the times on this. Maybe everyone else already knew this beautiful gem of knowledge. I forget where I first heard it mentioned, but half a bag of potatoes about to go bad encouraged me to give it a try. (If it messed up, they were about to go bad anyway. If it succeeded, I just saved 5 lbs of potatoes.)

5 lbs of potatoes were saved. Hallelujah! 

Yes, I fit 5 lbs of potatoes in my 6 qt crockpot. I ended up cooking it on high for around 6 hours before they were done. I think it would go faster if you didn't have quite as many in there as I did. 

I literally washed them and threw them in. No foil. No poking with a fork. Wash. Crockpot. It's beautiful.

Seriously, they're perfect! And you don't have the oven on for hours trying to get them perfect which saves on your electricity bill. And you save on foil. And on the time it takes to repeatedly stab multiple potatoes. Added bonus tip - if you don't want to stand and scrub massive amounts of potatoes, you can throw them in your dishwasher on a rinse cycle. Voila! Clean potatoes ready to go straight to the crockpot.

Given how much I love a baked potato, I'm pretty excited about this new-found trick - a complicated side dish just turned into something easy peasy. Seriously, your five year old child can do this all by himself. 

Just in time for the holidays. 

Cheers! From my kitchen to yours. ♥