The first step in making good sweet potato toast: Accept that it's not bread
They've been all over Instagram for a couple years now: Bright orange planks topped with avocado (of course), or some combination of spread, fruit, vegetable, egg, nuts and more. The idea to use sweet potato slices as bread stand-ins came from the gluten-free, paleo and Whole 30 worlds, and the appeal was cute enough for the idea to spread. Now the hashtag #sweetpotatotoast turns up more than 23,000 Instagram posts (and counting), there are entire accounts devoted to the food, and at least one manufacturer is selling a pre-sliced, pre-roasted, frozen, ready-to-heat product.
I've resisted.
I don't have to avoid gluten, I hate diets that cut out entire food groups and I couldn't quite imagine that using a toaster to cook sweet potato slices would be efficient, or even possible. Besides, nothing beats the texture bread brings to “real” toast.
But while I adore bread, I'm also a sweet potato fan. I know that not only are they nutritious, but they are so versatile as to be compatible with just about any sweet or savory flavor I could imagine. My curiosity finally got the best of me, and I gave some toast recipes a whirl.
First, I was right to be skeptical about the toaster approach. I cut a large sweet potato into ¼-inch planks, slipped two of them in, set it to high, and … well, very little had happened by the time they popped up. A few rounds later, they were warm and sweating moisture, but not getting tender. A few more, and they started to burn on the edges but were essentially still raw.
I was not the first to discover this, but the fact is, the process works much better in the good old oven (or a countertop toaster oven), where you can “toast” (i.e., bake) dozens of slices at a time, for however long you need. The trick, then, is to bake just until they're tender enough but not too soft to pick up and eat with your hands, which I think should be a requirement of anything called toast. One fine strategy is to bake a bunch, let them cool, refrigerate, then use the toaster to reheat a couple or three at a time before topping them — although they're perfectly great at room temperature, too.
I'm a bean obsessive, so I spread mine with a quick homemade hummus and added spiced chickpeas, along with radishes and sunflower sprouts. I immediately understood the appeal of sweet and starchy meets nutty and creamy. Now I'm ready to try other toppings, but I'll always include ingredients like those radishes and sprouts because they bring to the party something that toasted bread, but not toasted sweet potato, offers and that no diet could ever convince me to give up: Crunch.
• Joe Yonan is the Food and Dining editor of The Washington Post and the author of “Eat Your Vegetables: Bold Recipes for the Single Cook.”