The Best and Quickest Baked Sweet Potatoes

How to Bake Sweet Potatoes

There are different ways to roast and bake sweet potatoes:

• Chop sweet potatoes into cubes, drizzle with olive oil, then bake on sheet pan at 425F for 30 minutes.
• Pierce sweet potatoes with a fork, wrap in foil, then bake in the oven for 1 hour, until soft and tender.
• Then there’s the no-baking way to bake a sweet potato in the Instant Pot.

All of these methods and recipes will render a delicious end result, but nothing is like the method I’m about to teach you. Prepare to be majorly wowed by the flavor of this recipe. Even if you don’t like sweet potatoes, I think this recipe will change your mind. And the best part, this recipe only requires 3 ingredients: sweet potatoes, olive oil, and salt.

Just real-food goodness that’s flavorful and super healthy! Just as real food should be.

How to Make the Best & Quickest Oven Baked Sweet Potato Recipe

The secret to creating the best and quickest baked sweet potatoes is to first slice each potato in half. Sweet potatoes are an incredibly large and dense vegetable, in their raw state, which means they take forever to fully cook. When the sweet potatoes are halved, the baking time is dramatically reduced.

But something else happens when the potatoes are halved. The halved potatoes, when cooked flesh-side down, caramelize. Caramelization = incredible flavor and texture. 

The end result is the best baked sweet potatoes!

I won’t ever go back to the slow method for baking a sweet potato ever again. Give this method a try and tell me what you think.

How to make this recipe…

• Step 1: Scrub any dirt or debris off the potatoes (you’ll want to eat the delicious and nutrient-dense potato skin once baked)
• Step 2: Use a large sharp knife to cut the potatoes in half.
• Step 3: Place a piece of parchment paper on a sheet pan. This will keep clean up quick and easy for you.
• Step 4: Drizzle the halved potatoes with olive oil.
• Step 5: Sprinkle sea salt over each potato half.
• Step 6: Flip the potato halves so the sweet potato is flesh side down.
• Step 7: Bake for 30 minutes at 400F in the center rack of the oven.

How to Serve Baked Sweet Potatoes

This recipe can be used in so many different ways to create a variety of nutrient-dense meals, from breakfast to lunch to a dinner main meal or side dish. Here are a few ideas:

• As a side dish, enjoy the fiber-rich sweet potatoes with a healthy fat like butter and cinnamon or pepper. Serve the potatoes alongside grilled boneless chicken thighs, a roasted whole chicken, grilled steak, or your favorite protein.
• For a dinner, top a sweet potato with homemade chili for a stuffed sweet potato meal.
• For a lunch, make buffalo chicken stuffed sweet potatoes by tossing roasted and shredded chicken with a buffalo sauce (like this one from primal kitchen), then top the roasted potato with the chicken and a dollop of sour cream and cilantro. You can also do this with Instant Pot BBQ chicken.
• For a protein breakfast, spoon nut butter (like peanut butter) over the potato and top with banana slices and cinnamon and a teaspoon of hemp seeds (optional). This is one of my favorite breakfasts! Serve with fluffy scrambled eggs, a simple cheese omelette, or one of 15 different ways to make eggs for breakfast.

How to Prep Sweet Potatoes in Advance

Baking sweet potatoes in advance will save you a ton of time and make eating healthy, real-food meals easier during the busy week.

To prep sweet potatoes in advance…

• Bake the sweet potatoes: cut in half, drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with salt, then roast on a sheet pan for 30 minutes.
• Once baked to perfection, allow the sweet potatoes to cool on the sheet pan. You don’t want to place the sweet potatoes directly into a storage container while hot as this will cause condensation to build in the container.
• Once fully cool, place the potatoes in a storage container and place in the fridge. (Read: My best tips for storing fresh food in the fridge.)