Cooking baked potatoes needs a minimum time of 45 minutes in the oven, which can be a pain if you’re after a quick lunch or dinner.

However, a cooking influencer and nutritionist on TikTok has shared a quick and easy recipe that reduces the cooking time of a baked potato to just eight minutes.

TikTok user @liveeatlearn, otherwise known as Sarah Bond, shared a video where she demonstrated her “go-to” jacket potato recipe recipe that requires a wet paper towel.

She started the video by saying: “I don’t know who needs to hear this but you don’t need to turn your oven on just because you want a baked potato.

“I cook my potatoes like this properly four times a week back in college – it was the meal I survived on – and it’s still my go-to method for cooking them whenever I’m craving a baked potato.”

The cook starts by washing the potato and giving it a good scrub to get all the dirt off of it.

She then uses a fork to stab the potato multiple times – this is important as it lets the steam escape otherwise the potatoes could explode.

Sarah then soaked a paper towel in water and wrapped it around the potato – this acts as an evaporation buffer that helps the potato retain the water it needs to stay moist and fluffy.

Next, Sarah pops the potato in the microwave on the high setting for four minutes to cook, before flipping it over and cooking for four minutes on high again.

For those after “crispy” results, she recommends putting the potato in the air fryer for the second time four minutes.

Sarah then cut the potato open after cooking and the insides were super fluffy.

She topped off her jacket potato with grated cheese and what appeared to be sour cream.

Taking to the comments section, fellow TikTok users shared their thoughts on this cooking method.

@andrenalina said: “I put my baked potatoes in the microwave like this and they turn out amazing.”

@taylor99 wrote: “I definitely recommend four minutes in the microwave and the remainder of the time in the air fryer. So crispy!”