The great salt-baked sweet potato experiment

I bought two types of sweet potatoes at the Civic Center Farmers Market last week: a light sweet potato and an orange flesh sweet potato.

Backup.  To be honest, I thought I bought one sweet potato and one yam.  Which led me to wonder - what is the difference between a sweet potato and a yam?  

I found a helpful article in Bon Appetit, which provided me with the following clarification:

Sweet potatoes originated in South America and come in dozens of varieties; the orange-fleshed ones in question are only eaten in the United States. Yams, on the other hand, are rarely available in the United States, though they are popular in South and Central America, the West Indies, many Pacific islands, and parts of Asia and Africa. Orange-fleshed sweet potatoes have a rich, sweet flavor; yams are particularly bland, starchy vegetables that are best used as a background for more flavorful accompaniments. Sweet potatoes typically have a smooth skin, while the skin of yams is rough and somewhat shaggy.

Anyways, awhile back I was introduced to this awesome way of baking potatoes and I decided to do a little experiment to see which type of sweet potato would ultimately respond best.

Instead of wrapping my sweet potato in foil or piercing it with a fork, you simply wash the potato, dry it, rub it with olive oil and then liberally apply kosher salt all over the potato.

If you think about it, it's a genius idea, because by coating the potato in salt you are causing it to retain all the moisture it would normally lose during a dry bake.  

Here are the steps I took:

1. wash the sweet potatoes

2. coat the sweet potatoes in olive oil

3. pour a good amount of salt in one hand and use the other to press all sides of the potato into the salt.  Apply liberally

4. bake potatoes in a 400 degree oven, anywhere from 20-45 minutes, depending on the size of the potato

5. remove potatoes from the oven and brush off superfluous salt.  I tend to like a lot of salt on my sweet potatoes, so I didn't wipe away very much

interiors of the sweet potatoes

they are so moist, it's almost like slicing butter

And there you have it!  I have to say I think the light sweet potato responded best to the salt bake. The flesh was velvety smooth and super moist.

I encourage you to try this baking technique the next time you are planning on baking potatoes or sweet potatoes.  Or conduct a little experiment on your own and try this on any root vegetable!  It's a completely natural way of baking them, and you save yourself (and the environment) a sheet of foil.

You can read more via the Bon Appetit article here: http://www.bonappetit.com/tipstools/tips/2008/11/difference_between_sweet_potato_and_yam#ixzz1o2ms7N7j