Crockpot Baked Potatoes

Look at them, all snug and cozy. They don't even know they're
about to get cooked to death for 9 hours.

Since the dawn of time, mankind has struggled with one thing above all else. But there's nothing I can do to help you with your taxes, so we're gonna talk about potatoes instead. Baked potatoes are absolutely delicious, a truth which few people ever get to know because they (the potatoes) take approximately a lifetime to cook, and by that time you've got better things to worry about than potatoes. Thing like trying to get the neighborhood kids to have less fun, and eating dinner at 4 PM. Fortunately, with the advent of crockpot technology, you can just leave your potatoes cooking in a corner somewhere, forget about them, accidentally trip over your crockpot, and just when you get super angry at a cruel universe that you never asked to be a part of in the first place, get rewarded with a trove of delicious potatoes spilling out like buried pirate treasure.

Ingredients

5-8 Russet Potatoes (I don't care what the mainstream media tells you, russet potatoes are the ideal potatoes for baked potatoes. Depending on their size and the size of your crockpot, you'll be using more or less of them)
Oil
Salt
Garlic Butter (You can make this by sautéing garlic in some butter, then letting it cool. If that's too much effort for you, you can totally just use regular butter. Just know that we're all judging you.)
Sour Cream
Chives
Aluminum Foil

The first thing you're gonna need to do, according to several experts who are my mother, is carefully wash and scrub your potatoes forever. She has a thing about dirt. You can often find her saying things like "Potatoes grow in the ground...the ground is full of dirt" to no one in particular. She's technically right, but I still feel that rinsing off your potatoes and removing any obvious dirt clumps is more than enough effort to put in. In any case, once your potatoes are sufficiently clean, it's time to rub them down with some oil. Any cooking oil will do, though I prefer Olive Oil for several culinary reasons including the fact that I had some lying around. Take your oily potatoes and rub them down with salt. This is an important step because potatoes and salt are like a desert and water. No matter how much salt you add, there never seems to be any around. But if you add even a drop too much, you've got a flood plain on your hand. Take your salty oily potatoes and individually wrap them in aluminum foil. Toss them in your crockpot and wait.

No matter what Pinterest and Food Network tell you, baked
potatoes are supposed to be rustic and hearty, not dainty and
fancy. Also, I wasn't lying about having work in 5 minutes

I should have clarified. Turn your crockpot on, to low specifically, and then wait. Or sleep, or whatever, because even with our advanced foil and crockpot technology, this is still gonna take about 9 hours to cook. So maybe do this overnight, or before you marathon an epic movie trilogy. In any case, once your time is up open up your crockpot, unwrap your potatoes, then split them open and add toppings. I went with garlic butter, sour cream, and chives. You're welcome to go with something completely different and probably inferior, because these are your potatoes and you can bend them to your will probably. If you want to put more effort in, you can top them with sautéed vegetables and cheese, and then throw them in the oven until the cheese is browned. That'll totally be delicious, but also kind of takes away from the point of making these things in a crockpot to begin with. But maybe you enjoy contradiction. Maybe you're a riddle, wrapped in an enigma, wrapped in a vest. Maybe I'm going to go eat some potatoes in the 5 minutes I have before work. See you next week!