Oven Baked Sweet Potato
on Sep 22, 2019, Updated Jun 19, 2024
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Making an Oven Baked Sweet Potato is the best way to to get soft and sweet insides and a skin that’s easy to remove.
This simple guide for how to bake sweet potatoes will get you a perfectly roasted potato ready for your favorite toppings or primed to mash as a tasty and healthy side!
Turn a simple baked sweet potato into a meal by adding grilled chicken taco meat and fixings on top or use them as a side to Crock Pot Pulled Pork or Slow Cooker Chicken Legs. They are also perfect in Sweet Potato Casserole or to top a Shepherd’s Pie!
Table of Contents
Why You’ll Love This Recipe
- Versatile veggie: You can use baked sweet potatoes in casseroles, soups, and even some desserts.
- Delicious: They add a subtle sweet factor to any dish.
- Healthy: Sweet potatoes are packed with nutrients.
- Accommodating: They are dairy-free, gluten-free, and vegan.
Recipe Ingredients
Sweet potatoes: Try to get sweet potatoes that are roughly the same size so that they bake about the same amount of time.
See the recipe card below for full information on ingredients and quantities.
How to Make Oven Baked Sweet Potatoes
- Step #1. Wash the sweet potatoes and cut off both ends,
- Step #2. Poke each sweet potato with a fork about 12 times.
- Step #3. Place them in a baking pan.
- Step #4. Bake the sweet potatoes at 400 degrees F for about 50 minutes.
Recipe FAQs
I typically bake sweet potatoes for 45 to 55 minutes in an oven that’s at 400 degrees F. How long you cook them will depend on the size, so just pay attention to them toward the end of the bake time!
Sweet potatoes are done baking when you can easily pierce them with a fork or the internal temperature is between 205 and 212 degrees F in the thickest part of the potato on an instant-read thermometer.
Absolutely! While some people don’t like the taste or chewy texture of sweet potato skin, it’s packed with fiber and potassium. Eating sweet potato skins adds valuable nutrients to your plate.
Nope. Yams’ skin is tough, brown, and bumpy and looks a bit like tree bark, but sweet potatoes have a more red-brown skin. But yams are a different root vegetable than sweet potatoes; they’re similar in flavor and texture to russet potatoes or yucca.
Expert Tips
- Look for sweet potatoes that are firm, smooth, and free of blemishes or soft spots. They should also feel a bit heavy for their size.
- Try to use sweet potatoes that are similar in size so that they need about the same amount of baking time.
- To turn baked sweet potatoes into mashed sweet potatoes, remove the skins and add a little butter, salt, and garlic powder before you mash them.
More Vegetable Recipes to Consider
Vegetable Sides
Baked Cauliflower
Vegetable Sides
Air Fryer Sweet Potato Fries
Side Dishes and Salads
Air Fryer Zucchini
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Oven Baked Sweet Potato
Ingredients
- 1 to 5 sweet potatoes, large or medium
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Wash and scrub your potatoes clean.
- Cut the pointy end off of each potato with a sharp knife, removing about 1/2 inch on each end.
- Place potatoes directly on a baking rack set inside a baking sheet, and place it in the oven.
- Bake until the center of the potato reaches between 205 and 212 degrees F. This will be roughly 45 to 55 minutes, depending on the size of the potatoes.
- Remove from the oven, and let the potatoes cool a few minutes so that you can handle them.
- Cut a slit along the top, and serve with your favorite toppings. Or remove the skin from the sweet potatoes (they will slide off very easily), and mash the potatoes before serving.
Notes
- To tell if the sweet potatoes are done, it should be easy to pierce them with a fork.
- Even though sweet potatoes and yams aren’t the same, you can use the instructions here to bake yams in the oven.
- If you need cooked sweet potatoes for another recipe, this is the easiest way to make them because they require very little hands-on time.
I felt I should write something since I have made this recipe every week for the last couple of months. Okay, it might not be a real ‘recipe’, but it is my favorite way to make a sweet potato! No piercing or stabbing, peeling or using the microwave. I am not a meal prepper, unless you count this. It comes in handy when you have a toddler especially because you could mix in some sweet potato in nearly anything (pasta, oatmeal, etc.). I plan to use some in some brownies tonight. Thanks for posting this trick/tip/recipe 🙂