I tried Guy Fieri's baked-potato recipe, and it was actually worth the 7-hour wait

• After making baked-potato recipes by four famous chefs, I fell in love with Guy Fieri's method. 
• It takes over six hours to brine and make the potatoes, but the perfect texture was worth it.
• The skin was a little too salty for me from the brine, but the potato was full of flavor. 

I love cooking, but I never thought I'd actually enjoy spending seven hours in the kitchen for a humble baked potato.

The time-consuming baked-potato recipe from celebrity chef Guy Fieri is worth the wait.

I started by scrubbing the potatoes and soaking them in a brine for several hours

The key to these delicious baked potatoes is soaking them in a brine of salted water.

I combined warm water and a hefty amount of salt in a large mixing bowl and placed scrubbed russet potatoes into the brine.

To keep the potatoes from floating to the top, I used a glass to weigh them down. Then I let the potatoes rest in the brine for a whopping six hours.

From there, I rolled the briny potatoes in even more salt

After brining the potatoes, I rolled them in a mixture of seasoning salt, garlic salt, kosher salt, and black pepper.

I don't enjoy overly salted food, so at this point, I was worried that I wouldn't like this recipe.

The instructions don't say anything about puncturing the potato, so it went straight into the oven on a sturdy baking sheet at 400 degrees Fahrenheit for 45 minutes.

While the potatoes baked, I whipped up a horseradish sour cream

Fieri serves the potatoes with a quick horseradish sour cream, which consists of horseradish (I used store-bought), sour cream, salt, and black pepper.

I mixed these ingredients while the potatoes were baking so the topping would be ready to go.

Finally, it was time to assemble and dig in

The potatoes were done after 45 minutes in the oven.

I sliced into one and immediately knew it'd be amazing. The interior was so tender, and the skin was so crispy that it was lifting up at the edges.

I topped the spud with a generous amount of the horseradish sour cream and quickly devoured it.

The texture was perfect, with a creamy center and crunchy skin. Admittedly, the skin was a little too salty to eat much of on its own. But I enjoyed a few bites of it paired with the horseradish sour cream, which balanced out all the salt.

The contrasting textures, varying flavors, salty coating, and creamy horseradish topping all came together in the best way. Even though it takes nearly seven hours to make, this potato is worth waiting for.

This story was originally published in August 2021 and most recently updated on January 23, 2024.