These are all the tips needed to make the best baked sweet potatoes for a healthy, easy side dish that rounds out any meal.
Baking Sweet Potatoes Whole Makes Them Extra Sweet
Becoming ever more popular over the years, sweet potatoes have progressed from a once-a-year Thanksgiving side dish to a low-maintenance standby year-round. More sweet and flavorful than the ever-faithful white potato, nutrient-filled sweet potatoes are what I turn to whenever I need an easy side dish to round out a weeknight dinner, or good-for-me-carbo lunch.
With go-to recipes like my fry-like maple butter sweet potato wedges, or my smoky chipotle mashed sweet potatoes, this tuber has become a staple ingredient in my every day healthy cooking and eating. But the way I probably make sweet potatoes the most is baking them right in their skin, which makes for easy prep.
Baked sweet potatoes are totally simple to make, and undeniably the most flavorful of cooking methods thanks to these simple tips.
Enjoy!
The BEST Way to Bake Sweet Potatoes
- Preheat the oven to 400ºF. Baking sweet potatoes at a high temperature allows their natural sugars to caramelize and adds more earthy flavor. Their texture also becomes creamier and smoother.
- Place the potatoes on a foil-lined baking sheet, whole with the skin on. There’s no need to peel, poke, or individually wrap with foil (though I highly recommend lining your baking sheet with foil for easy clean up later). These potatoes are so unfussy.
- Bake until super tender. High heat yields perfectly tender sweet potatoes in about 50 minutes to 1 hour—unless you’re working with some unusually large taters.
⭐️ How to know when sweet potatoes are done: The peels should be papery and pulling away from the flesh, and a cake tester or toothpick inserted into the potato should glide easily through the soft flesh.
- Cool slightly , then dig in. Let them rest until they’re cool enough to handle, then take a knife to slice them down the middle. Peel the papery jacket to the sides, give them a little mash, and season. Easy peasy, right?
Topping Ideas
Depending on what you’re serving your potatoes with, there are tons of ways to top them:
- Butter, salt and pepper (if you want to keep it simple)
- Olive oil, salt, and a drizzle of hot honey
- Butter, a drizzle of honey or maple syrup, and fresh grated nutmeg or a sprinkling of cinnamon
- Load it up with salt and pepper, shredded cheddar cheese, sour cream, pieces of cooked bacon, and chives
- Miso butter or a miso mixture with a kick
- Butter, brown sugar, and smoked paprika
- Chipotle crema (mix in a bit of the sauce from a can of chipotle peppers in adobo with some sour cream) and avocado slices
- Black beans, corn, and taco meat
- Browned butter and a sprinkling of salt
What to Serve with Your Sweet Potatoes
If you make this recipe, please let me know! Leave a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ rating on this recipe below and leave a comment, take a photo and tag me on Instagram with #foodiecrusheats.
How to Make the BEST Baked Sweet Potatoes
Ingredients
- 4 sweet potatoes
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 400°F.
- Bake until soft. Place the potatoes on a foil-lined baking sheet, whole with the skin on, and roast for 50 minutes to 1 hour, or until soft and the peels are papery and pulling away from the flesh.4 sweet potatoes
- Cool slightly before serving. Let them rest until they're cool enough to handle. Then take a knife to slice them down the middle, peel the jacket to the sides, give them a little mash, and season.
Notes
Nutrition
More Easy Sweet Potato Sides
We send good emails. Subscribe to FoodieCrush and have each post plus exclusive content only for our subscribers delivered straight to your e-mail box.
Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest for more FoodieCrush inspiration.
As always, thank you for reading and supporting companies I partner with, which allows me to create more unique content and recipes for you. There are affiliate links in this post of which I receive a small commission. All opinions are always my own.
Rate & Comment