Hoisin Turkey & Broccoli Stuffed Sweet Potatoes Recipe | Cookin' Canuck (2024)

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Do you have to pierce sweet potatoes before baking? ›

Baking Sweet Potatoes Without Poking Holes in the Skin

No one wants to experience a potato explosion in the oven. The pressure inside a sweet (or regular) potato can build up in a hot oven. Pricking small holes in the skin with a fork is an easy way to let that steam escape, avoiding a sweet potato disaster.

Place the sweet potato meat into the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment and add the orange juice, cream, butter, brown sugar, nutmeg, cinnamon, salt, and pepper. Mix together until combined but not smooth and transfer to a baking dish. Bake the potatoes for 20 to 30 minutes, until heated through.

They'll take longer to cook when whole so leave them covered the entire time. In fact, try wrapping the potatoes in a foil pouch. This keeps more moisture in, which will help cook the potatoes evenly and prevent them from drying out.

1) Always poke a few holes.

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!

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.

Baking can also cause an 80% drop in vitamin A levels, twice as much as boiling. Therefore, from a nutritional standpoint, boiling rather than baking should be recommended for cooking sweet potato.

Despite their sweet taste, these potatoes have an intermediate glycemic index (GI) level, meaning they are digested and absorbed fairly slowly, leading to a more gradual increase in blood sugar levels. But, a lot of these benefits, including nutrients and taste, can be lost by boiling sweet potatoes.

Scrub and pat potatoes dry. Pierce potatoes all over with the tines of a fork and bake in oven, directly on rack, until soft and caramelizing, 1 1/2 hours. Slash the tops of potatoes open with the tip of a sharp knife and push ends of each potato toward each other to open.

Wrapping the sweet potatoes in foil ensures that they don't dry out too quickly, and allows you to add aromatics if desired. Unwrapping the sweet potatoes and increasing the oven temperature produces charred, roasted flavors and caramelizes converted sugars.

Is it better to bake a sweet potato in the oven or microwave? ›

Baking a sweet potato in the oven is great, but requires time. When you need a quicker solution, the microwave is your best friend — we're talking 5 minutes flat! We independently select these products—if you buy from one of our links, we may earn a commission. All prices were accurate at the time of publishing.

Slow-roasting the sweet potatoes activates endogenous enzymes that bring out their natural sweetness.

How to tell if sweet potatoes have gone bad. If your sweet potato is soft in spots, smells rotten, or oozes a mysterious liquid, that potato should be discarded. Another sign that sweet potatoes have taken a turn for the worse is if they start growing stalky purplish sprouts.

When sweet potatoes are boiled, the temperature doesn't get above 100°C, so this flavour development doesn't happen. The breakdown of starch into simple sugars during baking also helps by creating more substrates for these reactions, leading to a more fragrant and flavoursome result.

Typically holes are poked into a sweet potato to prevent a potato exploding in your oven. However, the chance of that happening is low, and according to Lifehacker, sweet potatoes will retain more flavor if you don't poke them. I tested this theory right away and found that flavorwise it didn't make a huge difference.

The potato will not rupture without one. In fact, I've found sweet potatoes cooked without being forked first are much easier to peel, post-roasting, as the steam pushes against the skin as it tries to escape, separating it from the flesh.

The outlet writes that rather than the sweet potato's skin acting as a dangerous and possibly explosive container for the potato's flesh, it's actually the "perfect roasting packet for the tuber's fluffy interior." If you pierce the skin, Lifehacker explains, you risk too much steam and sugar escaping during baking, ...

"Yes, it's good to prick them," Smith told Food52. "It pokes holes in the skin, which allows steam to escape. Otherwise, they could explode—it doesn't happen all the time, but it happens every once in a while. The potato is full of water it's trying to turn to steam, or water vapor.