Slow Cooker Baked Potatoes

Once you make baked potatoes in a slow cooker, you won’t make them any other way! This recipe for Slow Cooker Baked Potatoes is an easy and tasty way to make baked potatoes – just garnish with your favorite toppings for a hands-off, easy side dish!

Slow Cooker Baked Potatoes

How do you like your baked potatoes? With a dollop of butter? Sour cream and chives? Maybe you go all out with butter, sour cream, chives, cheese and bacon?

My kids and I like to add a generous amount of butter, black pepper, and a little garlic salt. Yum!

To write this post, I had to do a lot of experimenting!

Not only did I want to test out different types of potatoes, I also wanted to find out whether or not you needed to wrap your potatoes in foil or if you could just toss them in the slow cooker.

Perfect for fun dinners, get-togethers and football, this baked potato bar is fun way to serve your baked potatoes!

What type of potato is best for Slow Cooker Baked Potatoes?

In my research, I recipe tested Yukon gold potatoes, russet potatoes, and red potatoes.

I realize that russet potatoes are customary for traditional, oven-baked potatoes, but I wanted to see how each of these potato varieties were going to fare in the slow cooker.

My kids and I were unanimous in our decision that the best baked potatoes in the slow cooker were: Yukon gold potatoes!

While they did have the best skins, russet potatoes were a little too dry and starchy.

The red potatoes had good flavor but were too waxy, and ended up second out of the three.

The Yukon gold potato had a nice, buttery texture with great skins to go along with it.

Ingredients needed for this recipe (scroll down to recipe card for complete recipe):

Potatoes (I prefer gold potatoes as mentioned above)
Olive oil
Salt
Pepper
Aluminum foil – optional (see below)

Do you need to wrap Slow Cooker Baked Potatoes in foil?

To foil or not to foil, that is the question. To tell the truth, I have to say that I liked the potatoes both with and without foil, but there are pros & cons to both sides.

Without foil, the bottom of the potatoes directly touch the slow cooker, which gives the potato’s bottom a chewy, almost crispy crust that I enjoyed.

However, if cooked too long, that chewy texture can turn into a hard, inedible hockey puck.

In contrast, using foil consistently produces an evenly cooked baked potato every time because you’re essentially creating a barrier that prevents overcooking the bottom of your potato.

In a perfect world, I would recommend using foil for the first half of the cooking time, and letting those suckers go naked for the second half.

*Since publishing this, it has come to my attention that it’s possible aluminum can leach into your food from foil, which is not healthy.

Can you freeze baked potatoes?

Yes! Let your baked potatoes cool completely, wrap individually in plastic wrap or foil and place them in an airtight container or freezer bag and freeze for up to 3 months.

Potatoes have a high water content, so sometimes their texture is not the same when reheated from frozen.

Slow Cooker Baked Potato Dinner Ideas:

Top with Perfect Steak Chili, cheese, and sour cream.
Take a healthy (and vegan) Mexican route with salsa, avocado, and grilled fajita veggies.
Pour a cheesy broccoli cheddar sauce over them.
Dress it like a taco with taco meat, lettuce, cheese, and salsa.
Try using Garlic & Scallion Cream Cheese as a sour cream substitute!
Top with shredded chicken, BBQ sauce, and pickled onions or leftover pulled pork.

Looking for more potato recipes? Here are some favorites:

NOTES:

I have only cooked as many potatoes that would touch the bottom of the slow cooker. I have not attempted to stack them on top of each other.
This recipe has only been tested cooking the potatoes on “high”.
I have heard that occasionally, slow cooker ceramic pots crack from “dry heat”. While I have never experienced this, you may want to add a tiny bit of water to the bottom of the slow cooker to prevent this.