BETTER ROASTED SWEET POTATOES OK, so sweet potatoes are sweet, but they’re not that sweet, right? I mean, sure, you could go with maple syrup or honey and marshmallows on top, but I wouldn’t wish one of those monstrous casseroles on my worst enemy, let alone my own family Much better are really well-roasted sweet potatoes At their best, they’re creamy, flavorful, and sweet, with a slightly crisp, caramelized crust Too often though, roasted sweet potatoes end up mealy, starchy, and bland How can the same vegetable produce such distinctly different results? How does one get a sweet potato to really live up to its name? Here’s the deal: starch is made from sugar More precisely, starch is a polysaccharide, which means that it’s a large molecule consisting of many smaller sugar molecules (in the case of sweet potatoes, glucose) The thing about sugar, though, is that unless it’s broken down to relatively simple forms, it doesn’t taste sweet to us Your tongue simply doesn’t recognize it It helps to imagine sugar molecules as a bunch of circus midgets (OK, “little people,” if you will) When they’re all standing in a row, it’s easy for us to identify them as midgets But stack them up on one another and throw a trench coat over ’em, and they’re effectively hidden Now, sweet potatoes contain plenty of starch molecules The goal when roasting them is to try and break down as many of the starch molecules as possible into sweet-tasting maltose (a sugar consisting of two glucose molecules): pull off that trench coat and knock the little-person stack down We this with the help of an enzyme naturally present in the potatoes that is active between the range of 135° and 170°F Essentially, the longer a sweet potato spends in that zone between 135° and 170°F, the sweeter it becomes To test this, I cooked three batches of potatoes The first I popped directly into a 350°F oven and baked until tender The second I parcooked in a temperature-controlled water bath at 150°F for 1 hour before baking The last I parcooked in the water bath overnight before baking More sugary sweet potatoes brown faster You can immediately see that the parcooked potatoes browned better, indicating a higher sugar content that allowed them to caramelize faster The color difference was also reflected in the flavor: the parcooked potatoes were ...off that trench coat and knock the little-person stack down We this with the help of an enzyme naturally present in the potatoes that is active between the range of 135° and 170°F Essentially, the longer a sweet... bath at 150°F for 1 hour before baking The last I parcooked in the water bath overnight before baking More sugary sweet potatoes brown faster You can immediately see that the parcooked potatoes browned better, indicating... better, indicating a higher sugar content that allowed them to caramelize faster The color difference was also reflected in the flavor: the parcooked potatoes were