Simple Oven Roasted Sweet Potatoes

Simple oven roasted sweet potatoes with just a few spices, sweetness from a sprinkling of brown sugar, sliced into coins to bake up quick for a delicious and easy to make side dish for any meal.

These roasted sweet potatoes are a perfect side for roast chicken, salmon, burgers, an also goes great in any bowl meal. I will even eat them with some fried eggs for breakfast.

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Why these oven roasted sweet potatoes are so good:

I love roasted sweet potatoes whether I roast them whole, fries, chunks or circles. Its a staple recipe, we cook them often as a side or to have a batch on hand for easy meal prep.

Just a few ingredients, pop them in the oven and their natural sweetness enhanced with a touch of brown sugar adds an extra layer of caramelization when roasting.

Ingredients:

• Sweet Potatoes - I used red garnet and jewel sweet potatoes
• Coconut oil - you can use any high heat oil, I often use avocado or sunflower oil as well

• Kosher Salt
• Ground black pepper
• Smoked paprika
• Brown sugar - I use light brown sugar or Zulka brown sugar

You can use really any spices you like - I sometimes use garlic powder, onion powder, add a little kick with cayenne or ancho chili, cumin is also really good. If going for a more sweeter profile, cinnamon and a dash of nutmeg also works really well.

See recipe card for exact amounts.

How to choose a good sweet potato:

You want to look for firm potatoes, unbroken skin, no growths, soft or wet spots. No discoloration. As you can see above a couple of my potatoes were a few days older than others. I will trim out any spots or discolored areas as long as the potatoes are still firm. Anything soft goes to compost.

Sweet potatoes are often mislabeled as yams at grocery stores. Yams are a completely different root vegetable. Look for red garnet, orange garnet or jewel sweet potatoes. They will have orange flesh inside.

Instructions:

You can cut the sweet potatoes a variety of ways - my favorite is in rounds or half rounds. I cut them somewhat thin so they roast faster. Sweet potatoes can be hard to cut so make sure you have a good grasp on one end and your knife is sharp.

Because these are cut thin and are being oven roasted there is no need to par boil the sweet potatoes first.

Scrub the sweet potatoes well. No need to peel, but you can if you want. Slice into rounds, if they are very thick you can slice the larger rounds in half circles.

Toss the cut sweet potatoes with the coconut oil, salt, pepper, smoked paprika and brown sugar.

Spread around a lightly oiled baking pan. Don't use foil here. The sweet potatoes will stick to the foil. You can use two baking pans if you made 3-4 sweet potatoes worth of rounds.

Roast in a 400-425 Deg oven. Carefully flipping the sweet potatoes 2-3 times during roasting. Thats it perfectly seasoned and perfectly roasted!

Equipment:

• Sharp chef knife - I love my Japanese steel knives from Chef Knives to Go. Best knives I have ever owned and we sharpen them regularly. A sharp knife is one of the best tools any chef or home cook can have. Sweet potatoes and other tough vegetables or squashes are a lot easier to cut with a good knife.
• Sheet pan - use as large of a sheet pan you can that fits in your oven. So you can have the sweet potato slices in a single layer. Its ok if some overlap. You can also use two smaller sheet pans and rotate them halfway through roasting (moving one from upper rack to lower and vice versa)
• Spatula - I like using a thin spatula like a cookie spatula or fish spatula to carefully flip the sweet potatoes since they are more fragile than a starchier potato such as russet or yukon gold.

Roasted sweet potato recipe tips:

• Temperature - I will roast sweet potatoes at either 400, 425 or 450 deg depending on how thick I have cut the rounds or wedges. I like to stick with 425 as I feel its hot enough to cook quickly and not burn. I have burnt a few batches of sweet potato coins at 450 before. I usually roast thicker cut sweet potatoes at that temp.
• Extra crispy - For a little extra crispiness you can coat the potatoes in a starch such as corn starch or arrowroot then add your oil and spices. Make sure you roast the sweet potato pieces in an even layer if using a starch for extra crispiness
• Check often when roasting so you don't burn then and make sure you carefully flip them all every 10-15 minutes.

Storage:

• Refrigerator - up to a 4-5 days. They tend to get soggy and mushy any longer than that.
• Freezer - I personally have never frozen roasted sweet potatoes before, however that doesn't mean you can't. Keep in airtight, freezer safe container. Thaw in refrigerator then reheat however you like before servigm.

Reheating the sweet potatoes:

I like to either reheat the roasted sweet potatoes in the microwave for a minute, oven or even in an air fryer for a few min just to reheat and get a little crispy again. Any way works.

Other sweet potato recipes:

I love using sweet potatoes in all kinds of recipes from sweet to savory:

Pairing:

Make it a whole meal: