Amp Up Your Roasted Sweet Potatoes With A Luxurious Salt Crust

Sweet potatoes are among the most versatile ingredients in the kitchen. What else can you serve for breakfast, lunch, dinner, dessert, and even a midnight snack? Given just how nutritious sweet potatoes are — full of complex carbohydrates, fiber, protein, vitamins A and C, iron, and calcium, all with a low glycemic index, which means your blood sugar doesn't spike and then crash — why wouldn't we look for more ways to serve up delicious, nutritious sweet potatoes?

Once you find sweet potatoes that are free of cuts, bruises, and sprouts, which might indicate they're less-than-fresh, you're then ready to tackle a range of recipes. Simple sweet potato fries are perhaps the most classic way to serve up sweet potatoes, even though they are technically root vegetables, not potatoes. Regardless, those root vegetables can make a mighty fine dessert when featured in a classic sweet potato pie. 

When you want to bump up your tuber game, there's one surprisingly easy method of cooking sweet potatoes that not only makes for a spectacular presentation but also gives you an absolutely delicious dish.

Salt-crusted food isn't a newfangled cooking method; in fact, Living a Life in Color points out the method predates fancy tools like pots and pans, dating back to ancient times when salt was used as a way to protect fish, meat, and vegetables from a direct heat source. The process works by densely coating food in a mixture of either egg whites or water and salt. A lot of coating is required for this method, so think of measurements of salt in terms of cups, rather than in teaspoons. That salt crust acts as an insulator, evenly distributing heat, while also helping retain moisture and seasoning your meal.

Whole fish crusted in salt is probably the most common application for the method, but if you've never had salt-crusted sweet potatoes, you're definitely missing out. Epicurious notes that it's the table presentation that adds to the wow factor of salt-crusted sweet potatoes; when you take your salt-enrobed sweet potatoes from the oven, a crack from a kitchen mallet shatters the salt shell, revealing a perfectly cooked, melt-in-your-mouth sweet potato. For the most impressive results, try using one of the gorgeous purple sweet potato varieties.