Can You Cook Baked or Mashed Potatoes in a Slow Cooker? Best Ways to Cook Potatoes in a Slow Cooker

I love potatoes. All kinds of potatoes. You might even call me an addict. 🙂

My brother-in-law makes the most delicious au gratin potatoes I’ve ever tasted (I’ve got to niggle the recipe out of him). And so I’m always looking for an easier way to make them. So I set out to see if you really could make tasty potatoes in a slow cooker.

Are Slow Cookers Good For Baked Potatoes?

At first, I thought it wouldn’t work. I’m so used to either baking them forever in the oven or tossing them in the microwave to make them fast that I never thought about my slow cooker.

But I found out that I was missing out.

A friend introduced me to her favorite recipe for baking potatoes in a slow cooker, and I tried it out.

Although slow cookers aren’t fast, they sure are easy and maintenance-free during cooking. It takes a couple of minutes to prep the bakers, and then toss them in and let them go. No standing around waiting for the microwave to test them for doneness, or tying up your oven just for the potatoes.

What About Mashed Potatoes?

That one had me a bit puzzled, but I was eager to find the answer.

Holiday dinners around here are hectic because my family loves both sweet and mashed potatoes, and they all want both at Thanksgiving and Christmas. And mashed potatoes every time we do roast.

Plus, we need the oven for the turkey and the stove for the gravy and vegetables. There just isn’t enough room in our kitchen to cook more around the stove. As one member in my family says, “This is a two-butt kitchen.” 🙂

So every year we juggle things, and every year we have to leave some dishes in the warming drawer where they don’t always maintain their best texture and flavor.

However, we are a slow cooker family. I had an old and small slow cooker from my Grandma, and then we got one as a gift. Neither were really roomy enough to prepare a large recipe, so this year we bought the Crock Pot slow cooker with the mini-cooker add-on. I love it! And we have a big kitchen island with outlet plugs, so I could even borrow another one from my mom.

And with three different slow cookers on call, my mind has turned to ways to maximize their use. “POTATOES,” I thought. “I can do all the potatoes that way.”

So after a bit of research online, I found a couple of good recipes. They weren’t quite the way we like our mashed potatoes, so I made some modifications to meet my family’s exacting standards, and I can honestly report that mashed potatoes are doable in a slow cooker.

You can find our personal recipe for homemade mashed potatoes in a slow cooker here.

If you’ve got a recipe you want to try, but you’re having issues figuring out cooking time and temperature on your slow cooker, CrockPot has some good conversion charts and cooking times on this page.

Are You Hungry For Slow Cooker Potatoes Yet?

So whatever type of potatoes you love best, I think you can find a solid recipe for them online. Another good place to check is recipe books specifically for slow cooker recipes like the ones here at Amazon

No matter what, happy cooking! And I hope you like our recipes for baked and mashed potatoes to prepare in your slow cooker.