If this extensive list of our best sweet potato recipes doesn’t make it obvious, we’ll just say it: We love these sweet, starchy, colorful spuds, which thrive whether they’re mashed, baked, or fried.
Maybe you already know your way around this kitchen workhorse—you’ve been making simple roasted sweet potatoes and festive candied sweet potatoes for years. But you still need some fresh ideas, right? So we’ve collected all of our favorite ways to cook sweet potatoes below.
First things first: Make sure you know the difference between sweet potatoes and yams. In short, true yams are an entirely different vegetable. American yams, on the other hand, are merely mislabeled sweet potatoes thanks to a marketing gimmick from the 1930s. Other varieties, such as Japanese sweet potatoes, have distinct characteristics; while you can often substitute a regular sweet potato, it’s worth finding a specific variety when a recipe calls for it.
From there, follow your cravings. This collection includes the kind of cozy casseroles you’ll want to snuggle up with, a sweet potato pie you can make right now and freeze for Thanksgiving, actually crispy sweet potato wedges, and a wide variety of methods for transforming the tubers into hearty vegetarian dinners.
