Best Ever Sweet Potato Casserole Recipe with Pecans - All She Cooks (2024)

FAQs

Why do you soak sweet potatoes before baking? ›

The cold water bath helps rinse the starch off the sweet potatoes so they're a bit more crispy. That said, if you do not have the time, you can still get crispy baked sweet potato fries by using high heat and a little drizzle of olive oil.

Maple syrup, a dash of cinnamon, brown sugar and vanilla all make an appearance for an incredible flavor. It's hearty and satisfying. Eggs and cream help stabilize the dish and prevent it from becoming too runny (a common complaint with many sweet potato casserole recipes). Make it as smooth or chunky as you like!

A really good sweet potato casserole filling should be light and moist, not dense. If it's dense, then you may not have added an often overlooked ingredient—an egg. An egg adds lift, structure and volume and makes the filling more custard-like.

Types of Potatoes to Soak

"Sweet potatoes can also be peeled and stored in water for up to 24 hours."

TIPS & TRICKS to Make this Recipe: The main secrets to achieving that incredible crispy texture, is to soak the cut sweet potatoes in cold water for at least 30 minutes. This helps remove the starch from the sweet potatoes so they´re not limp & soggy.

Boil the sweet potatoes in a large stockpot until soft, about 25 minutes; drain. When cool enough to handle, peel the potatoes and transfer them to a large bowl. While the potatoes are still warm, add the butter, cream, agave, cinnamon and salt, and mash until smooth. Sprinkle with the orange zest.

The longer and slower you cook a sweet potato, the more maltose is formed and the sweeter it will taste.

Sweet potato casserole can get soupy for several reasons. For example, it's possible that your sweet potatoes have absorbed too much water while boiling. To prevent this from happening, don't overcook the sweet potatoes and drain them as soon as they are fork tender.

Then to make it essentially string free, push the hot sweet potatoes through a good quality kitchen sieve with the back of a large spoon. After cooking the sweet potatoes run them through a ricer. Boil them chopped into large portions - skin on with a slit in the skin for easy peel back.

How do I thicken up my sweet potato casserole? ›

However, if you prefer a really thick sweet potato casserole, you can add about 2-3 tablespoons of flour to your sweet potato batter and this will help the mixture to thicken. This is an especially good idea if using fresh sweet potatoes.

Soaking potatoes in water helps remove excess starch. Excess starch can inhibit the potatoes from cooking evenly as well as creating a gummy or sticky texture on the outside of your potatoes. Cold water is used because hot water would react with the starch activating it, making it harder to separate from the potatoes.

Why use salt water for soaking potatoes? There's moisture naturally found in potatoes, and moisture is drawn to higher concentrations of salt. (This is a process called osmosis.) So, if you put the potatoes in a salt water bath, that will help draw out some of their moisture, resulting in crispier fries.

Transfer to a bowl filled with ice and water and let it soak for 30 minutes. The cold water helps with removing excess starch and crisping up the potatoes later.

As the amount of sugar solution increases in the other containers, the mass of the potato cores goes down. If the water is highly concentrated with sugar, the water actually leaves the potato because there is a higher concentration of pure water in the potato than there is in the sugar water.