A while back I was talking with my mom about whether or not you can eat sweet potato skins. They look fairly leather like which to me seems like a visual deterrent to eat it. Although every time I would bake them in the oven I noticed one of the most alluring and fragrant parts of it was the skin. After I had eaten a sweet potato I noticed a perfuming sweet scent that always drifted from the sweet potato skin even though all of the flesh had been eaten. You know me and being swooned by various scents so I had to find out.
I of course wanted them to be edible in the back of my head so I kept my wishful thinking and with luck found out that you can in fact eat the skin. And for those of you who might ask yes, I believe the skin of a sweet potato is completely Paleo. Now there is another upside to the fact that you can eat the skin rather than the fact that there is more to greet your teeth with. You can now afford to be lazy and skip peeling the skin most of the time.
Maybe that’s just an upside to me but I’m pretty sure no one likes peeling anything, ever. Have you ever noticed that in movies set in pre-industrialized times that the saddest people were the ones peeling the potatoes? Think about it. Actually I think that it still applies to modern times as well. I feel pretty bummed whenever I start peeling sweet potatoes or anything for that matter, something about the job is just saddening, don’t ask me why because I might be slightly crazy.
Just remember that when you leave the skin your basically leaving a mop for skin, meaning your choice of cooking fat will reflect a lot of it’s flavor. So of course for me that meant to whip out the bacon fat. Or well technically it’s not bacon but it’s a lot like bacon. The cut of pork jowl has a very similar meat profile to that of bacon so I used the last of my jowl bacon fat for this. That’s how much I love these. Lucky for me my local farmer supplies me plenty of pork jowl bacon.
I suppose there is no reason to complain much about being out of pork jowl bacon fat because that’s just more incentive to cook some more pork jowl bacon. It’s like a cycle, the cycle of pork jowl bacon or regular bacon. All things bacon are usually good, okay I admit they’re always good.
- ½ teaspoons cinnamon
- ¼ teaspoon paprika
- ¼ teaspoon cayenne
- salt and pepper to taste (I usually use about ½ teaspoon salt and ½ teaspoon of black pepper)
- 2 large sweet potatoes
- 2 tablespoons bacon fat, lard or ghee melted (all work wonderfully but bacon fat is obviously the winner for this one)
- Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.
- In a small bowl mix together all the ingredients for the spice mix. Slice the sweet potato into 1 inch slices and lay them out on a baking sheet. Drizzle the sweet potato rounds with your bacon fat, lard or ghee and then evenly sprinkle the spice mix over the sweet potatoes.
- Place the sweet potatoes into the oven for 15 minutes then flip each of them and roast for an additional 10 minutes or until they're nicely browned on both sides.
Related Links:
Bacon Fat Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Crispy Garlic and Thyme
Baked Sweet Potatoes from Nom Nom Paleo
Paleo Sweet Potato Brownies from The Healthy Foodie
Loaded Baked Sweet Potato from The Domestic Man
Joshua Weissman is an influential 18 year old cookbook author, food photographer, food blogger, and real food advocate.
I totally get what you were saying about peeling stuff. It’s like it just brings an automatic cloud of gloom. These potatoes look so yummy!
My favorite way to cook sweet potatoes is to slice them a little thicker like that and do 30 minutes at 350 and 20 minutes at 400. They are like little pillows! I love the spice mixture on these!
This sound really good. Hmmmm I have sweet potatoes, I have bacon fat. But I am trying to avoid using the oven because it is far too hot right now and it really heats the kitchen (and the whole house!) up.
I wonder how good these would be cooked on the BBQ….
you can also cook them in the microwave or you little toast oven. I do my that way. I also cook the white sweet potatos. Delicious!!!! I don’t know how many carbs this vegetables have.
Great recipe, thanks for the shout-out!
Of course, and thank you Russ!
I loooove sweet potatoes! They are my favourite vegetables. Baking them in the oven like an ordinary potato in their skins is just the best! I also love them sliced and baked with garlic, chilli and rosemary. They are so versatile and so good for you….but you know that already.
My mom makes sweet potatoes similar to this. They are rubbed with olive oil, brown sugar, some salt, and cinnamon. Absolutely divine straight from the oven! These also look fantastic
These look wonderful. I usually make oven-baked spicy sweet potato fries, but I’ll have to try this. I haven’t thought to eat the skin, but I know it is so good for you!
By the way, I love your blog! All of your recipes look amazing!
Very fibrous and if cooked properly crispy and delicious!
Just made these and OMG!! They are great! My husband, who doesn’t like sweet potatoes, said it “was alright”. Which is saying a lot!! I will be making these often. Thank you for sharing!!!!