Garlic Honey Roasted Sweet Potatoes | Healthy Holiday Side Dish Recipe (2024)

FAQs

What flavors pair with sweet potato? ›

Sweet potatoes pair well with apple, peach, and orange juice, and coffee - flavors that have distinctly sweet or bitter notes.

TIPS & TRICKS to Make this Recipe: The main secrets to achieving that incredible crispy texture, is to soak the cut sweet potatoes in cold water for at least 30 minutes. This helps remove the starch from the sweet potatoes so they´re not limp & soggy.

Boiling sweet potatoes retains more beta-carotene and makes the nutrient more absorbable than other cooking methods such as baking or frying. Up to 92% of the nutrient can be retained by limiting the cook time, such as boiling in a pot with a tightly covered lid for 20 minutes.

The American tradition of cooking sweet potatoes with marshmallows is a bit of a leap for the European reader. But it always pays to keep an open mind.

While Beauregards may be the most common sweet potato, Jewels are right next to them in terms of being a great, classic sweet potato. They have a pretty, thin orange skin, and bright orange flesh that screams "sweet potato." (Or "yam," wrong as that may be. Shrug.)

Good news: vets give the OK when it comes to dogs and sweet potatoes! In fact, sweet potatoes are considered a healthy treat for dogs and offer lots of nutritional value for your pooch. Just be careful how you go about introducing this fiber-rich starchy root to your pooch.

That said, a plain sweet potato on its own is not enough for a meal. But Jones says it can make a fantastic base for a healthy, easy dinner. "Often I recommend clients bake their sweet potatoes as a part of food prep on the weekend and then they can slice open length-wise and quickly reheat during the week," she says.

For the most weight loss-friendly version, boil sweet potatoes for 30 minutes and enjoy with herbs, spices, hot sauce, a little Parmesan, or garlic. Keep in mind that eating too much of any food — nutritious or not — can contribute to weight gain.

No, yams and sweet potatoes are not the same. Yams have rough, dark brown skin that is often compared to tree bark, and their flesh is dry and starchy like a regular potato. Sweet potatoes have smooth reddish skin, softer flesh (when cooked), and a sweet flavor.

Why is boiling not good for sweet potatoes? ›

Bake, don't boil

Baking sweet potatoes caramelizes their natural sugars, especially when done whole. It intensifies their flavor and creates a richer taste compared to boiling, which can result in a watered-down, bland flavor.

Don't Rinse Sweet Potatoes

Wait to wash your sweet potatoes until you are ready to use them. The moisture could cause them to rot and lead to mold. If you'd like, use a dry cloth to brush off any dirt before storing, especially if it will dirty up your shelf or cabinet.

The reason they are hard in the middle is cook them longer or on a higher temperature. Soaking will not help soften your sweet potato unless you are putting the potato and water in a pot on the stove and cooking it. If your sweet potato is still hard it's not cooked enough.

Why Are Sweet Potatoes Sweet? When you heat a sweet potato, an enzyme starts breaking down it's starch into a sugar called maltose. Maltose is made up of two glucose molecules bound together, and tastes about a third as sweet as regular table sugar, also known as sucrose. Maltose contains no fructose.

Should you eat sweet potatoes when hungry Sweet potatoes are not good if you eat them when hungry. This is because sweet potatoes can increase acid production in the stomach. If you have stomach problems, you should not eat potatoes on an empty stomach, if you want to avoid making your illness worse.

Sweet potato fries pair well with just about flavor which leaves the dipping possibilities endless. A creamy yogurt-based sauce like a cinnamon yogurt is always a hit as well as something spicy like a chipotle aioli.