Healthy and tasty sweet potatoes, a very versatile dish that is quick and easy to prepare and offers lots of possible uses. Peel and eat or use them for sweet potato casseroles, sweet potato pies or sweet potato biscuits and much more.
Baked sweet potatoes have always been one of my favorites. I have fond memories of mama pulling a big pan of sweet potatoes out of the oven and sitting them aside to cool. I knew good things were on the way.
You might want to bake up a batch of them while you’re at it since they are so versatile. Mama would freeze any unused potatoes for later. She’d just pop them in a plastic container with the skins still on them. When she wanted to bake a pie or make some sweet potato biscuits, she only had to pull them out of the freezer and let them thaw. They’re really tasty and healthy for you.
Actually, they’re so simple you may be wondering why I’d even bother to do a step-by-step photo illustration on how to prepare them. Let me answer that.
01 – I wanted some sweet potatoes.
02 – If I was going to bake them, I figured I might as well go ahead and do the step-by-step.
03 – I needed to practice since this is one of my first recipes on the website.
04 – Maybe, you’d be searcing some information on how to do it and we could help.
Mission accomplished all the way around. How’s that? Ready?
Let’s Get Cooking!!!
You’ll need sweet potatoes of course. Try to pick out potatoes that are all about the same size.
Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
Use a vegetable scrub brush if you have one and wash the potatoes well, removing any dirt.
Dry them with a paper towel or just set them aside a few minutes to air dry.
Use a fork and pierce several rows of holes in each potato. This lets steam out as they cook and keeps them from bursting open. Sweet potatoes are pretty hard so use caution while doing this and don’t poke holes in your hand instead.
Use a rimmed type pan and line it with aluminum foil. Place the potatoes on the pan. Once they start cooking, the potatoes will ooze some sugar and it might drip down on the pan. It can be a sticky mess and hard to clean so be sure to use the foil. You can thank me later. Some folks might prefer to just wrap each potato individually and bake them. That works also, but I just prefer to bake them uncovered like this. The biggest difference would be the texture of the skins either way, but most folks peel them and toss the skins.
Place them on the middle rack of your oven once it’s holding at 350 degrees. You’ll want to check them after about 25-30 minutes to see how they are doing. Oven temperatures vary and yours might cook faster or slower. I let these bake for almost an hour. Use an oven mitt and gently press or squeeze on them to see if they are getting soft. It also depends on what you intend to do with them once they’re done. You might want a firmer baked potato to just peel and eat or slice and serve. You might want to cook them a bit longer if you plan to make mashed sweet potatoes for a casserole or pie.
I let these bake until they were pretty soft since I wanted to just peel them and eat them with my meal. With some toppings of course.
Now we’re talking! Peel the potatoes while they are still warm and place on your plate. Sprinkle on some ground cinnamon or cinnamon sugar and top with a couple of pats of real butter. You could even add a little brown sugar and go even sweeter. You could mash them up and mix in the cinnamon sugar and serve them more like you would regular mashed potatoes. Ummm….they’re good.
Enjoy!
