I’ve always known about sweet potatoes, but I never really liked them until a few months ago. In my family, sweet potatoes are served with cinnamon, sugar, and topped with marshmallows, and only come out on Thanksgiving, if then. My wife really loves them, and got me excited to try them again, with a simpler, and less sweet preparation. I ended up loving them, and typically prefer them now to russet potatoes for a simple side dish.

Sweet Potatoes

Sweet potatoes are really easy to cook, and can be completely cooked in the microwave if, like me, you care to eat only the insides. Here is how to cook sweet potatoes for two (for you and your sweetie, I suppose).

Ingredients

  • 2 medium sized sweet potatoes of similar size
  • 2 pats of butter
  • whole nutmeg
  • pepper

Technique

  1. Wash the potatoes under water, and scrub them well. There is no need to dry them.
  2. Pierce the potatoes along the top side three or four times with a paring knife or fork. This will help ensure that the skins do not rupture, and if any of the insides fall out, they do so on top.
  3. Place the potatoes on a plate and microwave them on high for 10 minutes. (If cooking one potato, 6-8 minutes of cooking will suffice.) This will steam the insides. There is no need to wrap the potatoes in plastic wrap, like the individual “microwave-ready” sweet potatoes sold in the supermarket.
  4. After microwaving, the inside of the potatoes will be cooked perfectly. You may serve them with no further cooking, if you do not wish to eat the peels.
  5. Optional: For a crispier outside, you may place the potatoes on foil or a small tray in a 450 degree F oven (a toaster oven works well for this) for 10 minutes. Further cooking will caramelize the sugars in the potatoes (which makes them sweeter), may blacken parts of the peels, and may cause the insides to leach out.
  6. Split the potatoes on the top, add butter, pepper, and freshly grated nutmeg, and serve. (Freshly grating the nutmeg with a microplane grater is far preferable to pre-ground nutmeg. Trust me on this!) You may prefer cinnamon and sugar instead of the nutmeg.