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Jacket (Sweet) Potatoes

A Mrs Huston Recipe

By Pyxy HustonPublished about a year ago 4 min read
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Photo courtesy of https://www.pexels.com/@lorencastillo/

One of my mother in laws recipes was a traditional British way to make a baked potato. It is a game changer. Who knew that baked potatoes could be addictive? The taste of baked potatoes when cooked this way is truly out of this world. I have made it an ungodly amount of times as it is a favourite of my partners.

But, me being me, I wondered how this recipe would turn out if instead of a regular potato I made it with sweet potato instead. My partner said they were heavenly. They sure powered through them at dinner.

Ingredients

1 - 2 Sweet Potato per person, Unpeeled - All I had were baby sweet potatoes so I made 2 each. Lately, even the small ones have been hard to find. I may not get to try this recipe with sweet potatoes any time soon unless I grow them myself. The ones I bought were small enough to fit in your hand. All they have now are ones that look a little larger than a baby carrot but longer and kind of dried out looking.

Oil - Any light oil will do. I always have olive oil on hand but canola oil peanut oil will do fine.

Sea Salt - The coarser the better. I have a ton of pickling salt that I bought when I was on a pickling spree. I used that sparingly as it is pretty strong compared to sea salt or table salt. You could use sea salt as well but the coarser salt seems to work better with this recipe as it gets crunchier than table salt.

Directions

Preheat your oven to 400C.

While your oven is heating, grab a baking sheet, I usually lay some tin foil on mine before placing it in the oven as it helps with the clean up and is cheaper than replacing old baking sheets that have baked on bits from decades ago.

Rinse your sweet potatoes and pat them dry. Some recipes call for you to pierce the potato with a fork but for this recipe, we do not have to do that. In fact, That is why some potatoes dry out in the oven.

Instead, we take a knife and make a lengthwise slice down the centre about a quarter of an inch deep. If you end up cutting your potato in half, you have cut it way too deep. We just want a small incision.

Now across the first incision, we are going to make a second cut across. It should look like a cross or an X depending on how you look at it. Again, not too deep; no more than a quarter inch. If you have a large sweet potato, you might want to make 2 cuts across the top kind of like an H. The incision is for venting steam while the potato is cooking.

Now comes the messy part. Rub the skin of your potato with enough oil that it is glistening but not so much oil that it is dropping. I usually pour a small amount of oil directly into my hand and then rub the oil all over the potato.

Place the oiled potatoes onto the cooking sheet. You can also place the potatoes directly onto an oven rack. If you do decide to go that route, I would place the baking sheet underneath to catch any oil dripping off the potatoes and making a mess in the bottom of your oven.

Sprinkle the potatoes liberally with salt and place on your baking sheet cut side up. Bake for one hour.

Remove the baking tray from the oven and, making sure not to burn your hands on the hot potatoes, cut the incisions just a little deeper, maybe another quarter inch. Pop the potatoes back in the oven for another 10 minutes.

Remove from the oven and serve.

Notes:

You will notice that potatoes baked this way come out of the oven with the skin looking a bit dried out but the inside will be creamy and all kinds of yummy.

If you want to try this with regular potatoes or larger sweet potatoes, bake for 2 hours before making the second cut.

To test for doneness, you can always stick a fork into the cut portion to see if it is cooked through. This is helpful especially for larger potatoes that may take a longer time cooking.

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About the Creator

Pyxy Huston

Canadian Graphic Designer, Young adult novelist and gluten free recipe developer from Canada

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