Potato microwave timer
Give it the number, the size and your wattage. Ovens from 700W to 1000W are covered — a 700W oven needs a third again as long as a 1000W one.
Cook for
4 min 20 sec
Expect 3 min 40 sec – 5 min 10 sec — ovens vary, and so do potatoes.
Then rest
3 min
Wrapped in a tea towel. The potato finishes cooking in its own heat and the inside stops being chalky.
- 1Prick all over, 6-8 times, with a fork. A whole potato is a sealed pressure vessel and it fails loudly if you skip this.
- 2Lay them directly on the turntable, an inch apart. Not in a pile, not in a bowl.
- 3Cook for 4 min 20 sec, turning each one over at the halfway mark.
- 4Wrap in a tea towel and rest 3 minutes before you open or mash it.
- 5Finish in a hot oven or pan for 5 minutes if you want crisp skin — the microwave cannot give you that.
Cooking two potatoes takes about 60 per cent longer than one, not double: the second potato rides on the heat the first one has already put into the oven.
The microwave is the only way to cook a potato in under ten minutes, and it makes a genuinely good baked potato — as long as you accept one thing: the skin will be soft, not crisp. Everything else people complain about comes down to two mistakes, no pricking and no resting.
The tool above is scaled for oven wattage because that is the variable people never account for. A 700W oven needs roughly 30% longer than a 1000W one for the same potato, which is exactly the gap between “perfect” and “still hard in the middle”.
Why pricking is not optional
A whole potato is a sealed container full of water, and the water turns to steam inside it. Without a way out, the skin holds until it cannot, and the potato opens along a seam with a bang and a mess of starch on the oven wall.
Six to eight stabs with a fork, all the way through the skin, is enough. Cut potatoes need less care because the surface is already open.
The rest is half the recipe
Straight out of the microwave, a potato is done on the outside and chalky in the middle — the heat has not evened out yet. Wrapped in a tea towel for three minutes, the core keeps cooking from the outside in and the texture turns fluffy.
This is also why people think their microwave “undercooks” potatoes. It does not; they are opening it too early.
Sizes, times and the second potato
Times below are a whole potato at 800W, pricked and turned halfway. Add roughly 60% of the first potato’s time for each extra one — they share the oven rather than the energy, so the second is cheaper than the first.
| Potato | Time at 800W | Rest |
|---|---|---|
| Small, 150g | 3 min | 2 min |
| Medium, 220g | 4-5 min | 3 min |
| Large, 300g | 6 min | 3-4 min |
| Two medium | 7-8 min | 3 min |
| Four medium | 11-12 min | 4 min |
If you want crisp skin
Microwave it first, then 5-8 minutes in a 220C oven or an air fryer. Rub with oil and salt before that second step. You get the speed of the microwave and the skin of the oven, which is the only way to have both.