All hail the sweet potato! This healthy orange vegetable is super versatile: bake it into crispy fries, stuff it with black beans and salsa, or boil it in a hearty stew. But one of our top ways to cook them? Make the best sweet potato recipe: oven roasted sweet potatoes! Dice them up, season with care, and roast until they’re browned and caramelized on the outsides. This basic side dish goes with just about anything. Want to bake it whole? Go Baked Sweet Potato or Quick Baked Sweet Potato.
How to make sweet potatoes
You don’t even need a recipe for making roasted sweet potatoes! Make this recipe once exactly as written, just to get a feel for the amounts of flavoring. Then you can go free form: and it’s easy to memorize too! Here are the basic steps, then a little more detail in the sections below (or jump to the recipe):
Preheat the oven to 450°F. Dice 2 pounds sweet potatoes into 3/4-inch chunks. Season with 2 Tbsp olive oil, 1 tsp garlic powder, and 1 tsp kosher salt. Roast about 25 minutes, until tender. No need to stir!
Why to dice into 3/4-inch chunks
This sounds oddly specific, right? But we’ve found that a 3/4-inch dice is the best size for roasted sweet potatoes. A 1/2-inch piece gets small and shriveled, and doesn’t feel like substantial enough bites. 1-inch pieces are rather large and take longer to roast. So 3/4-inch is perfect! (Trust us.)
The flavor secret: garlic powder!
Here’s our flavor secret for roasted sweet potatoes: garlic powder takes sweet potatoes over the top! It doesn’t even taste garlicky: it’s just savory, roasty goodness. To the mix you’ll also add olive oil and kosher salt. The quantities are easy to memorize:
2 pounds of sweet potatoes (about 4 medium) 2 tablespoons olive oil 1 teaspoon each kosher salt and garlic powder
Why to roast sweet potatoes at high heat
The best temperature for roasting vegetables? High heat: 450 degrees Fahrenheit or 230 degrees Celsius. Why? This gets them perfectly tender on the inside and caramelized on the outside. Use a lower temperature and it gets cooked through, but not caramelized. Throw those sweet potatoes onto a parchment paper lined baking sheet, and roast away! The best part? You don’t even need to stir: just leave the potatoes as is to make them beautifully caramelized on the bottom. Remove from the oven and enjoy!
Ways to serve these roasted sweet potatoes
The most basic way to serve this sweet potato recipe is as a side dish. It works equally as well for weeknight meals or for holidays like Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner. But get a little more creative, and they’re just as good in a taco or part of a bowl meal! Here are the best ways we’ve found to serve roasted sweet potatoes:
On a salad. Make a sweet potato salad by layering greens, pepitas, feta crumbles, and balsamic vinaigrette. With seafood. Try it with baked salmon, broiled salmon or baked shrimp. In a taco. Make sweet potato tacos with refried beans, salsa, and spicy sour cream. In a bowl meal. Throw them into a roasted vegetable bowl, rice bowl, or grain bowl. With an egg. Top a bowl with an egg, and you’ve got a savory breakfast.
More ways to make roasted sweet potatoes
In the mood for something different? You can also make whole roasted sweet potatoes, or cut your potatoes into alternate shapes and it’s a whole new recipe. Here are a few options:
Bake them whole. Make Baked Sweet Potatoes, which are perfect for stuffing and turning into a meal. Bake them halved. Cut them in half and they roast even faster! Try Quick Baked Sweet Potatoes. Make sweet potato wedges. Slice them into wedges and they’re ideal finger food. Go to Sweet Potato Wedges. Make fries. Everyone’s favorite sweet potato recipe? These Best Ever Sweet Potato Fries. Add them to a salad. Make this delicious Sweet Potato Salad!
Want more ideas? Go to 25 Best Sweet Potato Recipes.
This roasted sweet potatoes recipe is…
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