Unlike white potatoes such as russets or Yukons, yams and sweet potatoes do not have skins that are pleasurable to eat. Instead of getting crispy, they get tough, with a texture somewhere in-between paper and leather. The insides, however, are quite delicious, and we have the skin to thank for that—it acts as a perfect roasting packet for the tuber’s fluffy interior, and it does its job best if you don’t pierce it before cooking.
Piercing a sweet potato lets steam and sugar escape while roasting, and you don’t want either of those things to happen. I’m sure you’ve roasted a pierced sweet potato, only to find streams of sticky stuff coating the outside, which is what I call “a waste”; that sticky sweet flavor belongs inside the potato (and eventually inside your mouth).
Neither is there a reason to give the steam an escape route by way of a few fork stabs. The potato will not rupture without one. In fact, I’ve found sweet potatoes cooked without being forked first are much easier to peel, post-roasting, as the steam pushes against the skin as it tries to escape, separating it from the flesh. Roasting a whole, un-punctured sweet potato in a hot oven—I’m talking 450℉ for about an hour—results in a tender, fluffy potato with flimsy, papery, somewhat charred skin that flakes off in huge pieces with the gentlest of tugs. (If, however, you are par-cooking yours in the microwave first, be sure to give it a couple of pokes, as un-poked microwaved sweet potatoes/yams could rupture.)
It’s the lowest-effort, most effective sweet potato roasting method I’ve tried, is what I’m saying. I used it just last night. I took a whole, unwashed garnet yam, plunked it on small baking tray in a 450-degree oven, then walked away for an hour. Once it finished cooking, I sliced it in half to reveal a very noticeable gap (close to a 1/4 inch) between skin and potato. I pulled the skin off, cubed the potato, and ate it with some ramen noodles tossed in a little chili oil. It was good. I’d do it again, and I recommend you try it too.
One of the struggles of working from home—something many more of us are doing for the first time—is a constant ...
One of the prevailing themes of the last decade has been the rise of social and political polarization. From the ...
This week we’re joined by educator, activist and stand-up comedian Alvin Irby who tells us how we can get our ...
As we learned pretty early on in the year, what starts out as a quick check of what’s going on ...
When your job involves working on multiple projects—usually simultaneously—it can be easy to forget to update your portfolio. If you’re ...
I can’t figure out who, exactly, Amazon’s Halo Band is designed for. The screen-free band works in the background to ...
Owning a car or other vehicle can be a mixed bag. On the one hand, you have the freedom to ...
I have never understood the point of canned, chopped tomatoes. They rarely taste as good as their whole, peeled brethren, ...
Extended eviction and foreclosure moratoriums
The current eviction and foreclosure moratorium was set to expire on Jan. 31. Biden’s Executive ...
When you’re going grocery shopping this time of year, it makes sense to want to get in and out as ...
I have always been a disorganised parent. I remember my first baby, just a few months old, getting inconsolably cranky ...
The yoga pose known as downward dog is, I’ve always thought, one of the weirdest moves that’s considered relatively easy ...
A lot of us have had to put together new daily routines now that we’re working from home, parenting from ...
For today’s classic at-home workout, we’re looking all the way back to 2011, when Lifehacker created its own workout programme ...
Teaching a teenager to drive has never been easy. While it can be (or you want it to be) a ...
Sometimes, it just happens. You’re eating something delicious—maybe something you don’t get very often—and even though both your brain and ...
Though a lot of us have been living in various bottoms with elastic waistbands for the past seven months, there ...
Acknowledging the positives is a way to remember all that is good about life. However, as with everything, there can ...