Sweet potatoes are a vegetable that not a lot of us tend to eat but if you don’t like your normal potatoes then it’s worth giving these a go as they taste different. Even if you don’t like normal potatoes it’s still very much worth trying these out as they are actually healthier and sweeter tasting than you normal potatoes. Because of this, they can also be added to many different dishes and cooked in a variety of different ways which we are going to look at today.
Firstly you will need to gather a few ingredients together to get the best from these oven baked sweet potatoes. The first thing you will need is the sweet potatoes themselves and you get these for a decent price at any local supermarket or fruit and vegetable store.
For this we are going to take 8 sweet potatoes which covers around 2 servings.
Then you will need to grab some seasonings, usually just pepper and salt are needed here, along with 8 tablespoons of butter to give some taste to them.
Before you begin to cook the potatoes you will want to set the oven to 400F and preheat it before adding the potatoes. Line a baking tray with baking paper, foil or butter/oil so the sweet potatoes don’t stick to the tray.
Now wash the potatoes under cold water and remove any dirt or grit from the skin as we are going to be leaving the skin on them for nutritional benefits. You can either use your hand or a vegetable brush to do this.
Once you have finished with that step make several piercings into the sides of each potato you about to cook, like you would with a jacket potato. Take a fork and just make several puncture marks to allow the heat to cook them quicker.
Place them into the oven and leave the temperature at 400F, cook them for around 45 minutes or until they are tender. Once cooked take them from the oven and let them rest for 5 minutes before you cut them in half and then add your seasonings and butter to the top of them. This will make for a delicious snack for two people.
The second way of cooking them is a faster way that the oven but the process for preparation is just the same. You will need exactly the same ingredients so keep hold of your pepper and salt, and have 8 tablespoons of butter ready to add to the tops of the sweet potatoes once they have cooked. The butter will melt into the sweet potato and blend with the salt and pepper giving a mouth-watering taste.
Wash your potatoes in cold water to remove the dirt and grit, and use a wire brush or vegetable brush to get to the tricky parts. Pierce them in the same way as the oven method, but this time instead of preparing a baking tray and foil we are going to use the microwave.
Its important top place the sweet potatoes into a microwave safe dish, and only put them in two at a time.
The real benefit to microwave cooking is simply that it takes much less time compared to oven cooking but you want necessarily get the same quality of taste. Usually two sweet potatoes will take roughly 10 minutes to cook through, and once cooked you can add your seasoning and serve up the potatoes.
The final method in our selection of three ways to cook sweet potatoes is to mash them up, to do this you will need to peel the potatoes first and add some extra ingredients to your collection. You will need the usual salt and pepper, but you will also need 60ml of milk, 80ml of sour cream and slightly more butter (around 80ml).
The best way to make mash sweet potato is to boil them, and the quickest way to do this is to peel all 8 potatoes and then chop them into cubes to reduce cooking time. Add them to a large saucepan of boiling water and cook them until tender (10 minutes).
Once cooked you need to drain the water from the sweet potatoes using a colander and then begin adding the butter, milk and sour cream to the mix. Now use a fork or potato masher to start breaking down the potatoes until the mixture becomes smooth and takes on that mashed form.
Finally you can add the pepper and salt and blend it all together thoroughly so the mixture becomes creamy. As an optional extra you can return the pot to the oven and cook them for a further ten minutes to return that lost heat that would have disappeared when you added the butter and cream.