Roasted sweet potatoes are a classic side dish for lunch or dinner on Thanksgiving Day.
Roasted sweet potatoes are often simply seasoned with olive oil, but additions can vary widely, from simple parsley to cheese, to more or less common sauces, even reaching honey, maple syrup, and even marshmallows!
Garnet or Ruby sweet potatoes, the most widely available variety in the United States, the ones with orange flesh, are the most suitable for roasting.
They have a higher water and sugar content compared to dry sweet potatoes – those purple or white-fleshed ones often confused with yams* – and they turn out softer.
- Difficulty: Very easy
- Cost: Very economical
- Preparation time: 15 Minutes
- Portions: 6 people
- Cooking methods: Oven
- Cuisine: American
- Seasonality: Thanksgiving, All seasons
Ingredients
- 2.2 lbs sweet potato (Garnet or Ruby)
- to taste olive oil
- to taste salt
- to taste pepper
- to taste parsley
Steps for Roasted sweet potatoes:
Boil the potatoes for about 15 minutes with their skins on, then peel and cut into cubes.
Season with olive oil, salt, and pepper, and roast in the oven at 400 degrees Fahrenheit for 50 minutes, turning them often.
Serve seasoned with olive oil, or sauce of choice, parsley, or maple syrup.
* Confusion between sweet potato and yam:
Very often, Americans call sweet potatoes what is actually a yam.
The African slaves when they arrived in the United States called the local sweet potato “nyami,” which translates to “yam” in English and “igname” in Italian.
This is because they remembered their yam which had a similar shape and was a well-known food item in Africa.
But African yams are less sweet, larger, and more starchy, and come from different plants. The sweet potato is a root vegetable, while the yam is a tuber vegetable, the skin is not edible, it is drier and richer in starch.
