A sweet twist on the classic baked potato baked sweet potatoes make a delicious side dish or snack. Topped with butter a sprinkle of cinnamon or even a mix of herbs and cheeses these tubers are as versatile as they are nutritious. But for the absolute best baked sweet potatoes—caramelized on the outside and fluffy on the inside—your freezer is key.
| Channel | Publish Date | Thumbnail & View Count | Actions |
|---|---|---|---|
 Live Simply | 2017-05-19 16:59:06 |  430,242 Views |
The best and fastest baked sweet potatoes
That may sound counterintuitive. After all how can freezing an ingredient first result in a more tender flavorful end product? But the freezer method for baking sweet potatoes is tried and true. It essentially forces all the moisture out of the potato allowing the dense flesh to roast into a light airy consistency when baked.
Here’s how. First wash and scrub the sweet potatoes and let them dry completely. Place them in the freezer for at least three hours. Remove them from the freezer wrap them tightly in aluminum foil and bake them in the oven for two hours. You can set the oven to 300 degrees Fahrenheit but you don’t have to wait for the oven to preheat before adding the potatoes because they will cook while the oven is heating up. If you want a nice caramelized exterior remove the foil and turn the temperature up for the last 30 or 40 minutes.
The freezer method is a variation on the traditional way sweet potatoes were served as a street snack in China and Hong Kong cooked in a wok after being plucked from the field while still nearly frozen. The technique is similar to much of Chinese cooking which often attempts to drain ingredients of excess water. “One of the core tenets of Chinese cooking is that water is flavorless” Lucas Sin of Junzi Kitchen told Eater. “So a lot of Chinese techniques involve squeezing the water out of something so that what’s left is the more concentrated essence of that ingredient.”
