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a tray of baked sweet potatoes with one cut open to reveal tender orange goodness

Baked Sweet Potatoes.

  • Author: Bet Denton
  • Prep Time: 5 minutes
  • Cook Time: 1 hour
  • Total Time: 1 hour 5 minutes

Ingredients

  • Sweet potatoes (ideally, I like to use 10-12 oz potatoes, and several of about the same size)

Instructions

  1. Preheat the oven to 450. Scrub the potatoes and pierce them several times with the tip of a knife. Place them on a foil-lined baking sheet with a cooling rack under the foil (or, if you are fitting them in around something else in the oven, you can also form a little tray around each one with a piece of foil and bake them right on the rack).
  2. Bake for 1 hour, turning them once or twice (this is important only if you don’t use a rack, since it will keep them from getting a little blackened spot on the side that’s touching the pan, but I honestly rarely remember to do it).
  3. When they’re done, they will be very tender when you squeeze them and will be leaking sweet, syrupy potato juice that may be bubbling and turning brown and caramel-ly. The skin may also look loose or pucker a bit. Be careful when you cut them open, since they will be steamy hot inside!

Notes

Baked sweet potatoes reheat well, so make some extras for later in the week! (I warm leftover sweet potatoes in the microwave.) I like to bake them rather than boil them prior to making mashed or whipped sweet potatoes, too, so you don’t have to peel or cut them up raw, and so you don’t lose any nutrients in the water!