Name: The Perfect Baked Sweet Potatoes
Prep time: 5 min
Cook time: 80 min
Total time: 85 min
Ingredients: 4 sweet potatoes; 1 tablespoon olive oil; sea salt (to taste)

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Mastering the perfect baked sweet potato is a great skill for meal prep! Learn how to bake sweet potatoes in the oven, because they are a great option for building gluten free meals around.

How to Make the Perfect Baked Sweet Potatoes

Without a doubt, sweet potatoes are a food I can’t live without.

They make the perfect canvas for so many meals, and are loaded with tons of vitamin A, vitamin C, iron, and potassium. Sweet potatoes are a great source of fiber, meaning they help keep you full.

When I want a baked sweet potato, I want one that is baked until ultra-creamy and almost sticky inside. I learned to bake sweet potatoes from my grandma, who bakes them like this on Thanksgiving. I watched her poke at the sweet potatoes, and with patience, hold off dinner, until she was satisfied that they had properly reduced to be sticky-soft inside.

The perfect baked sweet potatoes are as easy to prepare as:

Spray or brush sweet potatoes with olive oil
Sprinkle them with a bit of Himalayan pink salt or sea salt
Place them on a baking tray — because the goal here is to get the sugars to “seep” out of the potatoes — not something you want to scrape from the bottom of your oven!

How to Bake Sweet Potatoes in the Oven

Bake sweet potatoes at 400º F. This temperature is hot enough that they won’t take too long, but cooks them slow enough to really soften and sweeten the flesh.

It helps to flip the sweet potatoes halfway through baking to ensure they evening bake.

If you forget to flip the sweet potatoes, they will still be delicious!

Do a “poke test” to see if they are ready — they should greatly yield to the touch. The skins will “puff up” around the flesh and an air pocket forms around the reduced flesh.

This takes a bit of practice! They will start to feel this way about 30 minutes before they are really done. Just be patient, and keep baking them.

I like to pull on the skin. If the sweet potatoes are ready, the skin pulls off very easily.

When you cut open the sweet potato, you want it to very easily “squish” and come off a fork very creamy.

If you’re baking a purple sweet potato, the process is slight different, because they are lower in sugar and have a more dry texture.

Baked Sweet Potato Recipes

Once your sweet potatoes are ready, serve them for dinner, or pack them in meal prep containers ready for the week’s meals.

If you need more inspiration on how to enjoy your sweet potatoes, try: