How to Bake Sweet Potatoes

About this Recipe

Sweet potatoes can be sauteed, boiled and in this case baked. When you bake them, they become extra sweet and flavorful and is by far my favorite flavor for enjoying sweet potatoes. They are a great vegetable to have in your fridge bottom drawer because they last for a long time and are extremely nutritious. High in all the immune strengthening nutrients make them an excellent vegetable to have on hand in the fall and winter months (in cold weather climates in particular) since they can help to keep your immune system strong. If you live in a hot climate than you can enjoy sweet potatoes cold in salads or chilled soup recipes.

Grandmother’s TIPS for How to Bake Sweet Potatoes:

1. Wrapping in tinfoil evens out the baking of the sweet potato, but is not needed if you want to avoid using tinfoil.

2. When you pierce the sweet potato, remember that bits of the juicy sugars will spill out the holes and so you will definitely want a pan, tinfoil or parchment paper below so that you have an easier clean up in your oven.

3. The skin is edible, just like with a regular potato so if you like the flavor of it, you can eat it.

4. If you are making the sweet potatoes for something like the Sweet Potato Pecan Recipe you can bake the sweet potatoes a day ahead, leave them in the foil wrap, let cool to room temperature, refrigerate and prepare them the next day.

5. Sweet potatoes are so versatile. They can be used in sweet potato recipes for soups, salads, stir fries and even sweet breads like this Sweet Potato Pecan Recipe.

6. Did you know that you can even control how sweet your sweet potatoes get? There are many different ways to cook potatoes, but cooking the sweet potatoes at a low temperature for a longer duration will make for sweeter potatoes since the enzyme has more time to break down. If you steam, roast or cook them quickly, you'll have a less sugary flavour.


Ingredients

(Print)

Makes: As many as you like but we are basing the recipe nutrition on 2 sweet potatoes.

2 sweet potatoes

2 teaspoons olive oil

Aluminum foil to wrap the sweet potatoes

Directions

1. When you choose your sweet potatoes, pick nice long ones as they are sweeter and more meatier.

2. Be sure there is no rot on the potatoes you select and try to choose same sizes so when you bake them they bake at the same time.

3. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.

4. Wash your potato skins really well both for dirt and for bacteria. Dry with a paper towel.

5. Cut off the little tips and poke holes into the potatoes. This helps with even cooking.

6. Use a pastry brush to apply a little olive oil evenly onto the potato.

7. Wrap the potatoes individually in aluminum foil. Wrap the foil a little bit on the loose side. Wrapping them allows them to cook evenly inside and out.

8. Place into the oven on the middle rack. It is good to place a sheet of aluminum foil on a lower rack just in case of leakage from the baking potatoes. It will catch the drips which will help to keep your oven clean.

9. Set the timer to 45 minutes and test by piercing with a knife. If it goes through easily then it is done.

10. You can just turn off the oven and let the potatoes sit in the oven for 10 minutes or so.

11. When you remove from the oven don't try to open it right away as it will be very hot.

12. If you are eating right away, once you remove from the oven, open the foil, cut the sweet potato in half and scoop out the potato into a serving dish.

ENJOY!

Return to this How to Bake Sweet Potatoes recipe or check out more recipes at Grandmother's Kitchen

Sweet potatoes are a great starchy vegetable that's great with pretty much any meal. These potatoes are much like regular white and yellow potatoes in texture, but they are much sweeter, almost as if sugar has been added to them. Sweet potatoes are mainly starch, like other potatoes and tuber vegetables.

It's heating these potatoes that helps break down an enzyme to turn the starch into maltose or sugar. Although maltose is not nearly as sweet as regular sugar. So by using this sweet potato recipe, you'll get potatoes that are just sweet enough because they are baked for a long time and also left to sit in the oven after baking. You can eat the sweet potato on its own as is, or add some butter or coconut oil and sea salt to enhance the flavours.

It's also nice to add some cinnamon or nutmeg to your sweet potatoes too. There is another tuber vegetable that people often mistake for sweet potatoes called a yam. It's easy enough to get these two potatoes confused because they look so similar. Both are tuberous root vegetables coming from a flowering plant, but they aren't even related. In comparison to sweet potatoes, yams will be drier and starchier. Usually, yams will be tan coloured on the peel and then golden yellow on the inside.

While sweet potatoes will be an orangish purple on the outside and then a deep orange on the inside. Sweet potatoes can also be a vibrant purple or light white on the inside too.



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