Weekly Dish

Poor sweet potato. With so many nutrients and such a delectably sweet, creamy flavor and lovely orange color, what do we typically do to you? Whip you up with a lot of butter, sugar, and eggs, and bury you under a layer of marshmallows. What a way to treat one of nature’s sweetest vegetables.

I love sweet potatoes. Granted, I first learned to love them buried under marshmallows at family gatherings. Since I started cooking them on my own, though, I’ve tried to learn how to capture their goodness in more creative (and more health-friendly!) ways.

To begin, I’ll tell you how I cook sweet potatoes to have with dinner. Of all the ways I fix them, simply roasting them in the oven until the outside is crispy and the inside is super-creamy is my absolute favorite. I could eat mounds and mounds of these at a time. I usually cook several at one time because the cooked potato has so many different uses.

The first step is to buy good sweet potatoes. They are in season right now, and the local ones here have been fabulous. I like to buy the small or medium-sized ones (the ones in the photo above are a little bigger than I like); they cook faster and tend towards the creamy side. The really huge ones can sometimes be stringy. For dinner, I’ll roast about 4 medium-sized potatoes, cut into chunks, and then place 3 or 4 more on the cookie sheet whole, to cook at the same time and to use in other recipes.

Garlic-Roasted Sweet Potatoes

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Scrub the potatoes you’re planning to cook and dry with a dishcloth. Cut about 4 of them into large chunks–I slice the potatoes into thick circular sections (about 4-5 per potato) and then quarter those sections. I also like to leave the skin on to retain the earthy flavor, but you can peel them if you like. Mince 1-2 cloves of garlic per potato. Spread the cut potatoes on the cookie sheets, making sure that each piece is lying flat on the sheet (no overlapping). Drizzle with olive oil and use your hands to turn them in the oil to coat. Sprinkle liberally with Kosher salt, cracked pepper, and the minced garlic pieces. I leave some extra space to bake a few whole potatoes for other recipes later in the week. Roast the potatoes for 45 minutes to an hour, stirring and turning the cut pieces about half-way through. Check the whole potatoes; they should pierce easily with a fork. The cut potatoes should be crispy and golden. Serve as a side for any meat dish, and reserve the leftovers for other uses (recipes to follow, I promise!)

Posted: Monday, November 21st, 2005 at 3:45 pm Filed under: On the Side, Basic Recipes, Vegetables. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.