How To Prep Your Spuds For The Tastiest Sweet Potato Pie

Although pumpkin pie is a timeless and beloved holiday dessert, sweet potato pies are the unsung treasures of festive gatherings. Popular in the Southern United States, sweet potato pie is a country classic with some serious centerpiece appeal. Of course, to make this sugary spud-infused pie, you'll need sweet potatoes. More specifically, pureed sweet potatoes. Although you can use canned sweet potato puree in a pinch, fresh ingredients offer a more downhome flavor and feel. Plus, baking from scratch is a quintessential holiday activity. While many recipes call for boiling the sweet potatoes, baking them before whipping them into a creamy puree is the elite method.

Oven-baking sweet potatoes triggers the Maillard reaction (don't mistake it for caramelization) – a chemical heat reaction in food between amino acids and sugars that facilitates browning and a deeper, toastier, and more complex flavor. In simpler terms, baking sweet potatoes makes them taste better. And if you've ever had a classic baked potato, we don't have to tell you twice that they take on a soft, fluffy, and with the help of some liquid ingredients, easy-to-whip texture. Unlike boiling, roasting won't saturate the tubers with liquid, which can disrupt the consistency of your pie and make it harder to achieve this texture. 

A good rule of thumb for softening up sweet potatoes in the oven is one hour at 375 degrees Fahrenheit, but feel free to experiment with a time and temperature of your own. While no one is stopping you from boiling your mashed sweet potatoes before integrating them into a pie filling, baking them is the better choice for more flavor.

Making a sweet potato pie is surprisingly accessible, even to foodies new to baking. And while oven-roasting your sweet potatoes before pureeing them is an essential step toward achieving a flavor-forward pie, there are a few additional prep work tips worth keeping in mind to get the most out of this holiday masterpiece. But don't fret, they don't have to complicate the baking process.

When shopping for sweet potatoes,​ know the red and green flags to look for when selecting produce. High-quality sweet potatoes will be firm, smooth, and blemish-free, boasting an even color throughout. Once you've selected the finest sweet potatoes for your soon-to-be award-winning pie, give them a good scrub and rinse before you pop them into the oven. Potatoes grow in the dirt, and unless you're an earthworm, soil isn't the best option for spicing up a pie. For the creamiest consistency, peel away the potato skins before you begin preparing the pie filling. Now it might seem smarter to do this step before baking, but the skins slide right off when they're fresh out the oven.

To achieve a hassle-free velvety-smooth pie filling, give the sweet potatoes a few pulses in a food processor. Once they've been whipped, introduce the butter, milk, eggs, sugar, and any other additional ingredients (cough cough, spike the mixture with eggnog for an extra rich and creamy pie), and pulse until the puree is ready for pouring into your crust. Et voilà — a toasty, caramelized sweet potato pie that might just outshine its pumpkin-infused cousin.