How To Make Tender Baked Potatoes On The Grill

Grilled potatoes are a perfect side dish at any barbecue. But ensuring they are tender all the way through is super important. So how do you do it? There are a few different steps that you will want to take, but the most important is to cook the potatoes for a short while before tossing them on the grill. By cooking the potatoes ahead of time, you can ensure that they get done all the way through, avoiding burning the outside while waiting for the center to finish up. 

There are a couple of different ways to pre-cook your potatoes. Microwaving them is the quickest way, and it only takes a couple of minutes. Just be sure to prick the potatoes a few times on each side so that they don't explode. If you don't mind turning on the stove, you can boil them for five minutes. If you decide to boil them, don't forget to add some salt to the water.

After you've pre-cooked your potatoes for a bit, the next step is to prepare the skins for the grill. We recommend doing so by coating their outsides in cooking oil and rock salt. Since salt sucks moisture out, this technique will help make potatoes that are soft and fluffy in the middle but nice and crispy on the outside.

Although a small amount of the salt will be absorbed into the potato, most of it will remain in the skins, and the insides of your potatoes will not come out too salty. Because of this, it is difficult to go overboard while coating the entire exterior of the potato in rock salt. You want to use a generous amount in order to create potatoes that are tender on the inside. In this case, there's no need to hold back when it comes to salt.

Wrapping potatoes in foil is a common technique for both baked and grilled potatoes, but at least one chef disagrees. "I see a lot of people using foil to wrap their potatoes in but this is a big no-no and causes soggy skins!" Isaac Toups, from the New Orleans restaurant Toups' Meatery, told Today. He explained that this happens because the foil causes the potato to retain moisture.

Whether or not you wrap your potatoes in foil is ultimately up to preference. The skins will be crispier without it. But the tenderness of your grilled potatoes is more dependent on whether or not they've been cooked a bit ahead of time and coated in salt. 

Since the foil traps heat, it might seem like a necessary step, but it's worth experimenting with to see which method you like best. If you're still not sure about foregoing the wrapping, why not try putting just one foil-free potato on the grill to see how it turns out?