25 Sweet Potato Recipes You Need In Your Life (2024)

FAQs

How many sweet potatoes do I need for 25 people? ›

“A general guideline to estimating how many sweet potatoes you need when hosting friends or family for a meal is one medium sweet potato per person,” Burgess says, as if she's done this many times before.

If you enjoy sweet potatoes, you can absolutely enjoy them daily. However, eating multiple sweet potatoes every day could cause a harmless condition called carotenodermia, where your skin turns yellow-orange. You may also want to be cautious about your sweet potato intake if you have a history of kidney stones.

Nor should you believe that you could live on sweet potatoes alone – you wouldn't do well on such a limited diet. (You wouldn't get enough protein, nor would they provide essential fats.)

Antioxidants Aplenty

Purple-fleshed sweet potatoes are thought to contain super-high levels of antioxidant and anti-inflammatory agents. As these substances pass through your system, they balance out free radicals -- chemicals that harm your cells.

Use 1 medium sweet potato per person.

Boiling sweet potatoes retains more beta-carotene and makes the nutrient more absorbable than other cooking methods such as baking or frying. Up to 92% of the nutrient can be retained by limiting the cook time, such as boiling in a pot with a tightly covered lid for 20 minutes.

How to tell if sweet potatoes have gone bad. If your sweet potato is soft in spots, smells rotten, or oozes a mysterious liquid, that potato should be discarded. Another sign that sweet potatoes have taken a turn for the worse is if they start growing stalky purplish sprouts.

Absolutely. Besides their health benefits, sweet potatoes are a great addition to any weight loss diet. First up, they're very high in fibre — especially soluble fibre. Soluble fibre is excellent because it slows down your digestion and helps you feel full, which can curb the urge to snack between meals.

The only food which comes close to being something you could survive on long term as a sole ingredient is the potato. The fact that the potato has Vitamin C means that scurvy is not a risk like it would be with almost any other food source lacking in this nutrient.

What is the simplest diet you can live on? ›

Just one sweet potato gives you 102% of the vitamin A you need each day. This helps keep your eyes healthy as well as your immune system, your body's defense against germs. It's also good for your reproductive system and organs like your heart and kidneys.

In particular, experts recommend avoiding these inflammatory foods: Red meat, such as steak and hamburgers. Processed meat, such as bologna, bacon, sausage and lunchmeat. Commercial baked goods such as snack cakes, pies, cookies and brownies.

Sweet potatoes contain high amounts of oxalates that may increase the risk of calcium-oxalate kidney stones. Sweet potatoes contain beta-carotene, and their excessive consumption can lead to hypervitaminosis A (vitamin A toxicity), in which excess vitamin A accumulates in the liver.

Potatoes or sweet potatoes: 5 to 6 ounces per person, which equals about 1 large Yukon Gold or white potato, or half of a large sweet potato.

How many potatoes do I really need? I did some research, and here's the answer: a large sweet potato is about a ½ pound. You'll want to figure on ⅓ to ½ pound per person.

Step-by-Step Guide to Calculating Potato Quantity

Multiply the portion size by the number of guests to get the total amount of mashed potatoes needed. For example, if the individual portion size is 1 cup and you have 25 guests, you'll need 25 cups of mashed potatoes.

Four large sweet potatoes can easily feed 8 people or more if it's the main side dish. For the holidays when you have lots of sides, it can serve 10 to 14.