Sweet Sweet Tubers

This is about baking sweet potatoes.  Scratch that.  This is about baking the best sweet potatoes you will ever eat.

It is not a fussy rant about the difference between sweet potatoes and yams, and what is truly a sweet potato, and what is truly a yam, and how people get them confused, etc.

Just so we are clear.  We are talking about the things you get in the supermarket, and they are generally called sweet potatoes.  They have orange flesh and brownish-reddish skin and tend to be pointy on the ends.  That’s all we have to concern ourselves with at the moment.

This is a technique I learned from Cooks Illustrated.  If you do not subscribe to Cooks Illustrated online, I strongly suggest that you take it under serious consideration.  They are fussy in all the right ways.  A subscription is expensive, but it is a lot less expensive than buying the full set of annual compendiums.  Plus you have the added convenience of being able to quickly search and access your favorite recipes wherever you have internet access.

And while many of the techniques and recipes from Cooks Illustrated are neither quick nor easy, the baked sweet potatoes are.

1) Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
2) Wash and dry sweet potatoes.
3) Prick them three times with a fork.
4) Rub their skins with oil – I use canola but you could use olive or vegetable.
5) Place them on a foil lined cookie sheet in the middle rack of the oven.
6) Cook the crap out of them, and don’t touch them for 40-70 minutes.

The timing is a bit funky because sweet potatoes vary in size so dramatically.  When you are cooking these, try to bake potatoes that are about the same size.  Just remember, it is best to stay away from the enormous ones.

Here is what will happen.  The water in the potato will heat up and turn to steam.  The steam will escape from the holes you pricked.  You will hear them hissing.  The sugars will start to liquify and bubble out.  They will caramelize on the skin and the foil-lined pan.  You will smell the sweet and bitter smell of sugar burning.

If you wish, you can probably turn off the oven but leave the door closed at this point.  The potatoes will continue to cook, but the juices will not burn as badly.  It’s a matter of personal taste and tolerance for the smell.

Officially they are done when a knife tip meets no resistance when put in the middle of the sweet potato.

What you will find, to your shock and amazement, that the flesh inside the skin is almost custardy.  By not moving the potatoes while they cooked, and letting the water escape, the sweet orange flesh has concentrated and collapsed upon itself.  By oiling the skin, it has created a thin papery crust with just enough tooth to complement the interior.

If you like, and why wouldn’t you, top with butter, salt and black pepper.  Although I have to say that these potatoes do not need butter.  They are sweet and creamy on their own.  Seriously, they’re crazy good.

Whenever I make these, I bake off as many sweet potatoes as can sensibly fit on my baking sheet.  Generally I max out at around six pounds.  The leftovers can be made into a wide variety of sweet or savory dishes.

We are not there yet.  We are still working through the basics.