Sweet potatoes are a common and familiar food to the Vietnamese people. Nowadays, sweet potatoes are not only used as a delicacy but also as a substitute for white rice in dieting and weight loss regimes. Sweet potatoes provide many essential vitamins, minerals, fiber, and antioxidants for the body. Eating sweet potatoes can help improve digestion, reduce inflammation, maintain blood pressure, and improve insulin sensitivity in people with diabetes…
Tips for choosing delicious sweet potatoes
When buying sweet potatoes, you need to observe the shape of each tuber. You should choose sweet potatoes that are thick in the middle, slender at both ends, and have brightly colored and evenly colored skin.
Do not choose tubers with scratches or uneven skin color. Especially, do not choose sweet potatoes with black spots. These are rotten and unhealthy sweet potatoes for the consumers.

You should choose fresh sweet potatoes with a slight fragrance, no signs of rotting, and no black spots.
In addition, when buying sweet potatoes, you should also smell the scent of the tubers. If the sweet potatoes have a strong pungent taste, it means they have signs of being hollowed out by pests, causing the flesh inside to be spicy. If the sweet potatoes have a slight fragrance, it is safe to buy them.
You should choose sweet potatoes of equal size to ensure even cooking. If you buy a lot of sweet potatoes, you can classify them into groups with similar sizes and cook them separately to adjust the cooking time appropriately and help the sweet potatoes cook evenly, avoiding the situation where some potatoes are overcooked while others are still raw.
Let the sweet potatoes soak in water before cooking
When you bring the sweet potatoes home, don’t cook them right away. According to folk experience, in order for the sweet potatoes to be sweeter, you need to let the sweet potatoes “soak in water”. You should keep the sweet potatoes in a dry, cool place to reduce the water content in the sweet potatoes. In addition, the starch in sweet potatoes will also be converted into various types of sugar. At that time, the sweet potatoes will be soft and sweeter.
Tips for boiling sweet potatoes
When the sweet potatoes are slightly withered, you can start boiling them. The unused part of the sweet potatoes should be kept in a dry, cool place, away from light, for later use.
Rinse the sweet potatoes thoroughly and put them in a pot. Pour water to completely cover the sweet potatoes. Especially, you should add a little salt to the pot to boil with the sweet potatoes. Salt will help the sweet potatoes become softer and have a stronger taste.
Turn on the stove and set it to high heat until the water boils, then reduce to medium heat. Depending on the size and quantity of sweet potatoes, you can adjust the boiling time accordingly. To check the doneness of the sweet potatoes, you can use a skewer to poke through the sweet potato. If the sweet potato is soft and no longer hard or firm inside, it is done.

Depending on the size and quantity of sweet potatoes, you can adjust the boiling time accordingly.
After the sweet potatoes are cooked, do not immediately take them out to eat. Pour out all the water in the pot and put the pot of sweet potatoes back on the stove to simmer for a while. By doing so, the outer skin of the sweet potatoes will dry and slightly charred. Adding this step will make the sweet potatoes more chewy and fragrant, similar to roasted sweet potatoes.