Two nights ago, I was tasked with baking potatoes to go with dinner. Having never cooked a potato before, I decided to use Google to see how long to bake a potato in the microwave. Surprisingly that’s not an easy question to answer. Google returned hundreds of links, and no consensus on cooking time.

One site listed “10 Steps to Bake a Potato in the Microwave.” Step 1 was “pick out the right potato.” What? I’m about to cook a potato, let’s assume I’ve already picked it out. This isn’t speculative potato cooking. I’m not planning for the future. No one reading an article about cooking a potato needs to be reminded to get a potato. There is literally only one ingredient.

I’m not going to list all the steps, for reasons, but one of them was “place the potato on a microwave safe plate.” If this was written in 1983, I would expect an explanation of what makes a plate microwave safe, or maybe a referral to another article on microwave safety. I assume, however, because I found this article on the internet, that it was written after the invention of the internet. I also assume that anyone who has ever used the internet, ever, has at least fifteen years experience using a microwave. Furthermore, the presence or absence of a plate has no impact on anything related to the cooking of the damn potato!

The article didn’t get to cooking time until step 6, and it said, “Choose a cooking time that is right for your potato,” with no reference chart. I’m not making any of this up. Why would you do that? Why would you a) write a stupid ten step process for baking a potato in a microwave, and b)not include the cooking time.

So here are the steps you actually need, if you ever  want to bake a potato in the microwave:

1. Wash a potato and poke it a few times with a fork.
2. Nuke it for five minutes. Turn it over and nuke it five more minutes.

Alternative cooking directions:

1. Wash a potato and poke it a few times with a fork.
2. Put it in the microwave and push the button marked “potato”

Feel free to bookmark this site if you’re worried you’ll forget. If this were an actual cooking blog, you could refer to the comments section for examples of people who substitute lemon soaked cauliflower for the potato or prefer to use a Dutch oven on stones heated in a conventional oven in lieu of a microwave. This is not that kind of blog, so keep your opinions to yourself.