Start Making Melting Sweet Potatoes And You'll Never Want Spuds Another Way - Tasting Table

"Fried or roasted, mashed or baked. Take your favorite potato recipe, swap in sweet potatoes instead, and you usually have an instant hit on your hand. This is especially true when it comes to melting potatoes - once you try them, you'll never want to have them any other way. For those who aren't sure what melting potatoes are, it's a take on the uber-luxurious potato fondant, a dish with a crisp, caramelized exterior and a buttery smooth and soft center."

"When you use sweet potatoes instead of regular potatoes, you get the same contrasting textures but with a deeper, more layered flavor profile. Because sweet potatoes have more natural sugars, the caramelization process delivers an intense earthy sweetness that you don't get with regular fondant potatoes. Melting sweet potatoes or sweet potato fondants are simple enough to make, with the basic recipe involving two steps. The first is to sear the outside of the sweet potato discs (or cubes, depending on how much time you want to spend chopping) and get them nice and crisp. This can be done in a pan or in a hot oven with some butter or oil for 10-15 minutes."

"The second step involves slowly infusing the sweet potato pieces with liquid and flavor through a combination of basting and baking. Baste them in a pan on the stove top in seasoned butter. This is where you can get creative, using added flavors in both your basting butter as well as the broth that it cooks in. For best results, use the Covington variety of sweet potatoes - that's the ones with the orange skin, not pale brown or purple."

Melting sweet potatoes produce a caramelized exterior and a buttery, soft center by leveraging sweet potatoes' higher natural sugars. The cooking method involves searing discs or cubes until crisp, then slowly infusing them with seasoned butter and broth through basting and baking. Searing takes about 10–15 minutes in a pan or hot oven using butter or oil. Basting allows creative flavor additions such as garlic and rosemary infused in butter, while simmering in broth deepens taste. The Covington variety with orange skin provides best results for flavor and caramelization.

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