Jacket potatoes are a staple British meal with endless topping variations. Regardless of what you choose to have on them, crunchy skin is a must-have.

When you leave spuds in the oven to cook for hours, the results speak for themselves, but the desirable crispiness is hard to replicate quickly.

Luckily, the humble air fryer offers a helping hand when it comes to speeding up the process, and one cooking expert has revealed the handy tip they swear by.

On her Instagram page, Anthea Malialis, better known as ‘superhomecook’, shared a video of a super-crispy-skinned jacket potato with a fluffy white core. She said: “Do you want to make a jacket potato like this? Here’s how…”

Her secret didn’t involve using a certain air fryer or a quirky gadget. Instead, she recommended using a combination of salt, oil and tin foil.

Salting potatoes before air frying can help them crisp up as salt draws moisture out of the potato, resulting in a drier, fluffier potato with a crispier skin.

Of course, Anthea warned that using salt is useless without choosing the right spud variety. She suggests choosing Maris Piper or King Edwards, known for being floury and starchy—excellent candidates for fluffy results.

The size of the potatoes doesn’t matter too much, but the cooking time will need to be adjusted depending on their size.

After sourcing your baking potatoes, wash them thoroughly and pierce many holes using a fork. For the most crucial part, getting crispy skin, you’ll need to brush the spuds with olive oil, said Anthea.

Season well with sea salt, which should stick to the oily skin, and set the air fryer to 170C. Wrap the potato in tinfoil before putting it directly into the fryer basket.

Though it’s usually avoided when it comes to cooking food in an air fryer, tinfoil is useful to aid the cleanup process afterwards, and it will keep some moisture inside to ensure the middle of the potato doesn’t dry out too much.

Anthea instructed baking the potato at 170C for 40 to 45 minutes. She said, “Once the potatoes are finished, open the foil, lightly spray with oil, add a pinch of salt, and cook for a further 15 minutes at 205C, as this will help to get the skin crispy.”

Many Instagram users were surprised by the easy method and its intensely crispy results. One person wrote, “This is so simple to make and yet one of my all-time favourites.”

Another chimed, “top tier potato”, while a third said: “The crisp on the outside is so satisfying.”