A cheap and easy recipe for roasting sweet potato chunks for a side dish, stir fry, chili, and more.
Who doesn’t love sweet potatoes?
Seriously. I want their names.
Before we get to the goodness of sweet potatoes, let’s talk ingredient prep.
WHAT’S INGREDIENT PREP?
It’s like meal prep, but prepping individual ingredients. That’s it.
I like to prep individual ingredients so all of my meals don’t have to be so set in stone – I can decide at the last minute what to throw together. Also, who doesn’t love throwing some roasted sweet potato into a dish? I’ve put them in everything from stir-fries to chili to salads to eating them on their own with some salt, pepper, and butter.
FUN FACTS ABOUT SWEET POTATOES
In the last several years, I have purchased approximately 6 million sweet potatoes (give or take) and have learned a few things:
Sweet potatoes are nutritious: rich in many nutrients such as vitamin A (in the form of beta-carotene), vitamin B6, vitamin C, potassium, and fiber. They’re good as either a savory (salt & pepper) or sweet (maple syrup & cinnamon) side dish. They’re filling, low in calories, have a low glycemic index, and are great at any time of day.
Sweet potatoes with soft spots, major sprouts, and deep gouges are not good. Don’t buy the ones with soft spots, major sprouts, and deep gouges.
They store best in a cool area of your kitchen. Not in your fridge.
Poke holes when baking. I like to use a thin, serrated knife to make deep holes and then wrap the potato in aluminum foil, leaving the top of the foil slightly open to let out steam.
They are great topped with chili. I’ll be sure to have a chili recipe (or five) soon and will remind you of this fact when I do.
INSTRUCTIONS
Additional instructions are in the recipe at the end of this post.
As with all of my recipes, tweak this however you like. I’ll be honest – this recipe is kind of hard to mess up. It’s truly the most basic of basic recipes.
Peel them if you’d like, but I like to keep the skin on. I love the taste of it. If you leave it on, be sure to wash the potatoes well. Although some recommend it, I don’t use a brush – just my fingers – but I do try to scrub off any rough spots or dirt.
I cut off the tip from each end, cut slices about a half inch thick, and cut those into chunks. I don’t want the pieces to be too small, otherwise they might burn in the oven.
I will typically cut up three to five potatoes at once. Lately, I’ve been going through them fast, as I’ve been having a small bowl of them almost every day with my lunch (or sometimes a larger bowl as my lunch). I also give boiled, cooled sweet potato chunks to my dog with his meals. Yes, he is spoiled.
Once chopped, I put the chunks into a large mixing bowl along with salt and olive oil, and I mix it with two large spoons. They’re not drenched in oil but just lightly covered.
See the entire recipe below. It’s super easy!
Finally, feel free to adjust the cooking time to your liking. I like some of them slightly browned, but mostly left orange. You may hate any kind of browning, or you may want all of them to be brown. Adjust accordingly.
STORAGE
Unless you’re going to eat them later that day, I suggest storing the roasted sweet potato chunks in the freezer. While you could use a glass container, I’ve found that storing chunks of things in the freezer (also, frozen fruit) works best in a plastic bag – or bags, depending on how much you want to separate them into servings beforehand.
For a while, I was storing sweet potato chunks in batches of about two ounces each, and they looked like this.
Lately, I’ve been storing them in one large bag so I can take out however much I want. Sorry, I did not take a photo of the large bag of roasted sweet potato chunks. You’ll just have to imagine it.
As far as reheating, since I do not have a microwave, I just put them in a pan or a pot with maybe a tablespoon of water and let them heat up until they’re ready to eat.
COST
You’re in luck: sweet potatoes are one of the cheapest foods out there. At my local supermarket, they are $0.99 per pound, although I’ve seen them elsewhere for $0.89 or $0.79 per pound. I bet they are even cheaper outside New York City.
For the record, Trader Joe’s does not sell produce by weight, so their sweet potatoes are usually $0.79 each. In that case, the bigger the potato, the more bang for your buck. You can also buy them in various places by the bag, which might be even cheaper.
I tend to think that any food under $1 per pound is a pretty good price, and not many fruits and vegetables cost that little. So, sweet potatoes are definitely a savings winner in my book.
For the recipe below, I wrote it for three medium-sized sweet potatoes at about 9-10 ounces each, totaling 28 oz.
At $0.99 a pound, 28 oz. of sweet potatoes would cost me $1.75. With seven 4 oz. servings, each serving is just $0.25.
I hope you enjoy these roasted sweet potatoes! If you make this recipe, please let me know how it goes.
Roasted Sweet Potato Chunks
Ingredients
- 28 ounces sweet potatoes about 3 medium sweet potatoes
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 1/8 teaspoon salt or to taste
- 1/8 teaspoon black pepper or to taste
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 425ºF.
- Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Depending on how many sweet potatoes you have, you may want to line two baking sheets, if possible.
- Scrub the sweet potatoes and remove any dirt. Cut off any bruises or sprouts.
- Carefully cut the potatoes into roughly 1/2 inch slices.
- Cut those slices into cubes.
- Put the sweet potato chunks into a mixing bowl. Add 1-2 TBSP of olive oil and mix thoroughly. Sprinkle them with salt and mix again.
- Pour the sweet potato chunks onto the baking tray(s).
- Place the baking tray in the oven. Cook for 20 minutes, flipping the potatoes halfway through.
- If using two trays, you can also switch which oven shelf each one is on halfway through.
- After 20 minutes, remove and allow to cool. Add pepper if desired.
- Store the cooled chunks in the fridge for a couple of days. If you need longer storage time, place them in a sealed container in the freezer.
Notes
- Nutrition data is provided as a courtesy, calculated automatically, and may differ depending on your specific ingredients and amounts.
- For this recipe, I’ve estimated that three medium-sized sweet potatoes would be about 9-10 ounces each, and that one serving size is 4 oz., a typical size for a side dish.
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