Sweet Potatoes are tasty, healthy and…. unfortunately take a long time to bake in the oven. But fear not, you CAN use modern technology to speed up the process so today we will learn how to cook a sweet potato in the microwave oven.
First things first, make sure you thoroughly wash your sweet potato. You don’t have to peal it but make sure its clean before you pop it in to the microwave so give it a good wash.
Once it is clean, we prick the sweet potato with a fork and make small holes in 5-6 different spots of the sweet potato. You don’t have to go deep with the fork just pierce the skin a little into the flesh. Now place them in a microwave oven dish and place them into your Microwave oven.
Microwave oven vary in strength which is measured in watts, typically they are between 500 and 900 watt strong but can go up to 1200 watts. The stronger your microwave oven the less time the Sweet potato will need to cook. So instead of setting the timer to 5 minutes and walking away, we will zap the sweet potato 2 minutes at a time until it is soft all the way to the core.
So start of with a 2 minute timer and then prick again with the fork to see if it is cooked. Careful they do tend to get VERY hot.
To give you an indication, at 800 watts a sweet potato should take about 5 to 6 minutes to be fully cooked. Once they are soft to the core, let them cool. You can then cut the top of the sweet potato open and add some seasoning. Some good ideas are:
- Salt & Pepper (duhhh)
- Sweet Paprika
- Chilli Pepper
- Cumin
- Yogurt
Sweet Potatoes are by nature sweet (as the name suggests) so you can also try some sweet toppings such as honey, cinnamon and nuts. Let your imagination run wild.