Scrub sweet potatoes well before cooking. Whenever possible, cook them in their skins as they are easier to peel after cooking and retain more nutrients. They may be baked or boiled whole and then peeled and sliced or cubed.
You can either peel or leave the skin on: just make sure to cut off any black spots. Place the sweet potatoes in a pot and cover with 1 inch of lukewarm water; add a pinch of salt. Bring to a boil and cook until tender when pierced with a fork, around 7 to 12 minutes. Then drain.
Do I Need to Peel Before Boiling? You do not need to peel sweet potatoes before boiling. If leaving the peel on, you will need to pierce the skin of the potato with a fork a few times. Also, boiling a sweet potato with the peel will require slightly more time for it to cook through.
Using a circular motion, scrub potatoes with a vegetable scrubber or vegetable brush. You can also use a kitchen scrub brush, exfoliating gloves, or a kitchen towel, as long as they're clean. If your scrubbing tool becomes dirty while you're cleaning the potatoes, rinse it in cold water.
Like most potatoes, sweet potatoes grow underground and should be rinsed and lightly scrubbed before peeling. Peel the sweet potato from root to tip: Obvious, but helpful! Use a serrated peeler if you've got it, although a regular peeler is fine.
Just be sure to store peeled potatoes in water for no more than 24 hours. After that, the cool refrigerator air will convert the starches in the potatoes to sugar, causing the flavor and texture of the spuds to change.
It's not necessary to soak sliced sweet potatoes before frying, but if you do soak them, they will come out crispier. Soaking sweet potatoes in cold water will help release the starch, making them more available to crisp up.
Rinse, Scrub, and Poke
After rinsing and scrubbing, poke holes into the sweet potato with a large fork. This step enables them to release any excess moisture while baking in the oven. It is optional, but you can also drizzle a little oil and sprinkle some salt and pepper over each one if you'd like to eat the skin.
Bring to boiling, cover, and cook until tender. How long to boil sweet potatoes: For one pound of sweet potatoes, cover the pan and cook sweet potatoes in the boiling salted water 20 to 25 minutes or until just tender. You should be able to easily pierce the sweet potato with a fork or knife.
Bring the water to a boil, then reduce to medium heat and let the potatoes cook 15 to 20 minutes, or until you can easily pierce several pieces (always test more than one) with a knife. Potatoes cut into small pieces will take less time to cook.
Just enough to take some of the hardness out of the sweet potato... it makes cutting them much, much easier. Don't cook them so long that they're cooked (i.e., like a butter knife through butter) -- that doesn't work for fries, but just enough to make cutting them manageable!!!
If you want to soften them slightly to make them easier to cut, poke several holes in the skin with a fork then microwave for 1 to 2 minutes to soften. Be sure to use an oven mitt to remove the potato from the microwave; it will be really hot!
Sweet potatoes can be soaked in cold water overnight. A soak should last between one and two hours. If sweet potatoes are stored in the refrigerator for more than an hour, they should be refrigerated for no more than one hour.
To help with cutting, you can soften the sweet potatoes in a few different ways. Parboil – peel and trim off both ends of the sweet potato and place in a saucepot with water. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat and simmer for about 8 minutes. Remove from the water and allow to cool before cutting into your desired shape.
Are sweet potato skins edible? Yes—and you should definitely eat them. Removing the skins removes some of the nutrients from the potato, so don't peel them if you're making healthy sweet potato recipes. The skin also helps the inside stay moist as the potato cooks.
For peeling uncooked sweet potatoes, remove any woody parts first and then use either a serrated vegetable peeler or a paring knife to remove the skin. For peeling boiled sweet potatoes, simply fill a bowl with ice water and place the sweet potatoes inside. You can then easily peel the skin away with your fingers.
Place the sweet potato in a container of water. Keep the top 1/3 of the potato exposed by placing toothpicks into the sides. The pointed end should be down in the water.
Soak in cold water
Once you've cut the sweet potatoes into wedges, an absolutely crucial step is soaking them in cold water. By soaking the wedges you draw out the starch from the potato.
Why use salt water for soaking potatoes? There's moisture naturally found in potatoes, and moisture is drawn to higher concentrations of salt. (This is a process called osmosis.) So, if you put the potatoes in a salt water bath, that will help draw out some of their moisture, resulting in crispier fries.
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 best potatoes for French fries are soaked in a sugar solution before frying. The sugar solution has something to do with the carbohydrates and prevents the potatoes from soaking up a lot of grease, so they get crunchy.
Boiling may theoretically be best, but sweet potatoes are so incredibly healthy that the actual best way to prepare them is whichever way will get you to eat the most of them! The exception is deep frying, which can lead to the formation of acrylamide, a potential human carcinogen.
“Salting the water not only seasons the potato, but it also allows it to boil to a hotter temperature. This in turn cooks the potatoes' starch more thoroughly, resulting in a more creamy texture [for mashed potatoes],” says Sieger Bayer, Chef and Partner at The Heritage.