Glazed Sweet Potato Coins Recipe (2024)

FAQs

Why do you soak sweet potatoes before baking? ›

The cold water bath helps rinse the starch off the sweet potatoes so they're a bit more crispy. That said, if you do not have the time, you can still get crispy baked sweet potato fries by using high heat and a little drizzle of olive oil.

Baking Soda – boiling the potatoes in baking soda draws out the starch and allows the outside to get brown and crispy. Sweet Potatoes – yams work fine too. Extra Virgin Olive Oil – gets infused with rosemary and garlic and is the key to getting that crispy exterior.

The takeaway. If you want to eat sweet potatoes and maintain blood sugar balance, Sapola suggests boiling rather than roasting them. This method will take the glycemic index impact down a few points and maybe even challenge your cooking creativity.

Wrapping sweet potatoes in foil helps in a few ways. It prevents the exterior of the tuber from drying out and overheating too quickly, which would minimize enzymatic activity; it also results in a more evenly cooked texture.

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.

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.

Browning butter packs in tons of flavor, without dulling the sweet potatoes. Slow-roasting the sweet potatoes activates endogenous enzymes that bring out their natural sweetness. A touch of maple syrup, butter, and a bit of chopped thyme are the only embellishments these naturally sweet sweet potatoes need.

They're high in fiber and antioxidants, which protect your body from free radical damage and promote a healthy gut and brain. They're also incredibly rich in beta carotene, which is converted to vitamin A to support good vision and your immune system.

Give them a cold water bath: Once your fries are chopped, toss them into a large bowl. Then cover the fries completely with cold water and let them soak for at least 30 minutes (or up to overnight). This will help to rinse off the excess starch and help the potatoes crisp up beautifully in the oven.

It's really the best way. Microwaving sweet potatoes cuts down cook time by 45 to 55 minutes, and, according to a 2018 study, helps maintain the potato's nutritional value. All cooking methods cause foods to lose some of their nutrients, but the quicker your potato cooks, the more nutrients it will retain.

What is the healthiest way to eat a sweet potato? ›

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.

Some say wrapping baked potatoes in aluminum foil helps them cook faster (aluminum conducts heat, then traps it), and it does keep them hot for longer once they come out of the oven, which is why we think restaurants use this method. Wrapping potatoes will also give you a softer, steamed skin, if that's what you like.

Trapping that spud in aluminum foil where the moisture cannot escape results in a wet potato. Over baking the potato in foil cannot be seen (or easy to smell that it is overcooked) so you can end up with dark brown skin on the bottom, tough to eat and giving off a slightly burnt taste.

Before baking, use a fork to prick each sweet potato several times. You don't need to jab the fork in deep. We're creating steam vents. Otherwise the pressure in the sweet potato could build up so high in the oven that it explodes—an unlikely possibility but one best avoided!

Soaking potatoes in water helps remove excess starch. Excess starch can inhibit the potatoes from cooking evenly as well as creating a gummy or sticky texture on the outside of your potatoes. Cold water is used because hot water would react with the starch activating it, making it harder to separate from the potatoes.

Sweet potatoes - removing starch

Soaking time of about 5 minutes is sufficient.

As the amount of sugar solution increases in the other containers, the mass of the potato cores goes down. If the water is highly concentrated with sugar, the water actually leaves the potato because there is a higher concentration of pure water in the potato than there is in the sugar water.

Some recipes call for soaking the sweet potatoes in water before cooking them to help remove some of the starch and make them more crispy but have found that this step isn't necessary for sweet potatoes as they don't have as much starch as regular potatoes.