Oven-Baked Sweet Potatoes

Baked sweet potatoes are a great way to get dinner on the table without very much effort on your part. You're likely to have all the ingredients in your pantry—you just need four, plus the sweet potatoes. And besides a little work to prepare the potatoes, it's entirely hands-off while the sweet potatoes bake to silky and tender.

Whether serving as a side dish to roasted chicken or the main dish with toppings galore, baked sweet potatoes are a reliable weeknight recipe and one that you'll be tempted to break out every week when sweet potatoes are in peak season.

Learn how to make baked sweet potatoes, and feel free to personalize the toppings to your preferences. The Southern Living Test Kitchen recommends topping the sweet potatoes with chopped chicken or leftover chili to make a satisfying main dish.

Ingredients for Baked Sweet Potatoes

As is, this recipe for baked sweet potatoes is a great side dish with minimal seasonings. But you can actually use just the method to bake the potatoes. Then, pick your toppings that you want, including pulled pork, ground chicken, and more.

• Sweet potatoes: When selecting the sweet potatoes you plan to bake, it's important to choose potatoes that are of similar sizes and shapes. This will ensure that they all cook at the same rate. With some small potatoes and some large ones, you're likely to burn the little ones while the bigger ones will come out uncooked in the middle. Also, very round potatoes (those shaped like baseballs) will take longer to cook than potatoes that are more elongated in shape.
• Butter: Once baked, the filling of sweet potatoes is silky, even creamy, but adding a bit of butter to the interior of the potatoes boosts the richness and adds incredible flavor. We'd suggest mixing the potato flesh with some butter no matter how you plan to serve baked sweet potatoes.
• Light brown sugar: A classic topping for baked sweet potatoes, light brown sugar enhances the potatoes' own molasses-like flavors. You could use dark brown sugar for a more intense flavor.
• Salt and pepper: Always the perfect choice for balancing seasoning in a dish. But adjust how much you use based on how you plan to serve these potatoes.

How To Bake Sweet Potatoes

Full instructions for baking sweet potatoes are below with step-by-step photos, but here's a brief outline to simplify the process.

• Step 1. Prepare the potatoes: Wash the sweet potatoes using a brush to knock off any stuck-on dirt and debris. Dry the potato, then use a fork to stick holes into the potato flesh. This creates steam vents so the potatoes can cook more evenly.
• Step 2. Bake the sweet potatoes: Arrange the sweet potatoes on an aluminum foil-lined baking sheet. Bake at 425°F for 45 to 55 minutes, or until a fork or knife inserted in the thickest part of the potato doesn't meet resistance.
• Step 3. Cut open, and add toppings: How you top your sweet potato is up to you, but get the right shape by slicing along the longest side of the potato. Then, use your fingers to gently push inward from both ends of the sweet potato. This will force open the potato, revealing all the tender, scoopable flesh.

Tips for Perfect Baked Sweet Potatoes

It doesn't get much easier than this three-step, five-ingredient dish, but even these simple baked sweet potatoes can benefit from a little additional know-how:

• Clean the potato: Potatoes are root vegetables, meaning they grow in the dirt. It's highly likely there's some dirt still clinging to the skin. Of course, dirt is rarely dangerous, but getting a bit of grit or sand in your first bite of sweet potato isn't fun. So grab a bristle brush, and give the potato a scrub under running water.
• Prick the potato: Don't skip this. While it's unlikely a potato will explode (as we're sure your mama told you), it can slow down the cooking process. Those tiny steam vents created by the fork pricks help the steam move through the potato evenly.
• Protect against burnt-on sugar: Sweet potatoes have a lot of natural sugars, some of which are likely to leak out during baking. Wrap the baking sheet with foil to protect the pan from those sugars.
• Don't wrap potatoes in foil: Some people swear by baking potatoes in foil, but we don't like that technique. Closing in the potatoes creates steam, and the skin on the potatoes will end up wet and a bit tough in our experience. Save the foil for the pan.

What Temperature Should You Bake Sweet Potatoes?

We recommend you bake sweet potatoes at 425°F. This temperature creates the just-right results for a baked sweet potato in less than a hour in most cases.

You can also roast at slightly lower temperatures. Just keep in mind, the lower the temperature, the longer the baking. At 350°F, you should plan to bake for 1 hour to 1 hour and 15 minutes. For 400°F, a sweet potato will likely be done between 50 minutes and 1 hour after baking starts.

How Long To Bake Sweet Potatoes

Typical sweet potatoes (about 12 ounces) will need to bake between 45 and 55 minutes at 425°F. But if you are cooking larger sweet potatoes or baking at a lower temperature, you'll need to increase the time.

The best way to know if a sweet potato is fully baked is to insert a fork or knife in the thickest part of the potato. When the utensil doesn't meet resistance, the potato is finished and ready to come out of the oven.

Ways To Serve Baked Sweet Potatoes

These baked sweet potatoes are perfect as a side dish for meals like steak, pork tenderloin, or barbecue chicken. We also will always love stuffed potatoes.

But the ideas don't stop there. You can also scoop out the flesh of the potatoes and use them in a variety of dishes, including Savory Sweet Potato Casserole, Classic Sweet Potato Pie, and Sweet Potato-Topped Southwestern Cottage Pie.