Can I Prepare Sweet Potatoes Ahead Of Time
Yes, sweet potatoes can be steamed and prepared ahead of time. You can refrigerate them for 3-4 days.
You can also mash and freeze the cooked sweet potatoes in portions in freezer-safe containers. When you are ready to eat, simply thaw them in the microwave and enjoy them with your favorite meal!
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How Long Does It Take To Cook Sweet Potatoes In The Instant Pot
The cook time for Instant Pot sweet potatoes is 16 minutes. Wait, 16 minutes?! But hold on for one second. The Instant Pot requires about 10 minutes for preheating to come up to pressure before cooking. Then this recipe requires a 10 minute Natural Release for cooling down, where the pressure cooker releases the steam inside naturally.
Whats the total time for pressure cooker sweet potatoes? The total time for this recipe is 35 minutes. Thats pretty good compared to about 1 hour for baked sweet potatoes.
A final note: the timing for how to cook sweet potatoes in an Instant Pot does depend on the size of the potatoes. This recipe is for medium to large potatoes, about 10 to 12 ounces each. For very large sweet potatoes, use about 18 minutes. Smaller potatoes could use less time, about 14 minutes.
Sweet Potato Cooking Times By Size
Set your Instant Pot to the below number of minutes, based upon the size of your potatoes. Remember to choose sweet potatoes that are roughly the same size so that they all finish cooking in the same amount of time.
- Small Sweet Potatoes . 12 minutes.
- Medium Sweet Potatoes . 17 minutes
- Large Sweet Potatoes . 25 minutes.
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Is It Better To Boil Or Bake Sweet Potatoes
Boiling may actually retain most of the antioxidant power of sweet potatoes, compared to roasting and steaming. Baking can also cause an 80% drop in vitamin A levels, twice as much as boiling. Therefore, from a nutritional standpoint, boiling rather than baking should be recommended for cooking sweet potato.
Storing And Reheating Instant Pot Sweet Potatoes
- Storing: Keep leftover cooked potatoes stored in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 4 days.
- Freezing: Allow the potatoes to cool completely then wrap each sweet potato individually first in plastic wrap and then in foil. Freeze for up to 3-4 months and thaw in the refrigerator before reheating.
- Reheating: Reheat in a preheated 350 F oven or in the microwave.
Read Also: Instapot Food Burn
How To Steam Sweet Potatoes
We always thought the best way to cook a potato was a Baked Sweet Potato. But turns out, steaming is just as delicious! It makes the vegetable incredibly tender, perfect as an easy side dish or loading up with toppings as a main dish.
Steamed sweet potatoes are also faster than baked: baking a whole sweet potato takes about 1 hour, whereas steaming takes about 30 minutes total. Heres how long to steam sweet potatoes:
- Place water in a pot to a level just below the steamer basket and bring it to a boil.
- Add the steamer basket with whole sweet potatoes. Maintain a steady boil and steam for 25 to 35 minutes, depending on the size of the potato, until tender when pierced with a fork. Allow to sit for 5 minutes, then slice in half and add toppings.
Looking For More Healthy Instant Pot Recipes
When we first heard about the Instant Pot, we thought it was mainly helpful for cooking meat quickly. However, since weve learned that its helpful for vegetarian recipes too, were starting to build up some Instant Pot vegetarian recipes. For example, you can make rice, quinoa, dried beans, dried chickpeas, mashed potatoes, and even soups. Here are some of our favorites. What other Instant Pot vegetarian recipes would you like to see?
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Can You Cook Sweet Potato From Frozen
There are many ways you can cook the sweet potato home fries after they have been frozen. You could roast them, or sometimes I even batter and fry them . My favorite way to prepare them though is to pan-fry them with just a little bit of oil over medium high heat until they get a little color all around.
Instant Pot Sweet Potatoes Recipe
Side Dish 35 mins
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Instant Pot Sweet Potatoes Recipe Cooking sweet potatoes in an Instant Pot makes cooking sweet potatoes so quick and easy! Perfect for enjoying as baked sweet potatoes as a side dish or for cooking to use in sweet potato casserole and so many other dishes!
Ive had my Instant Pot for sometime now and am always discovering a few essential ways that I like to use it. From cooking chicken quickly to make Barts chicken salad throughout the week to steaming these sweet potatoes to serve like I would baked sweet potatoes or even to use in my sweet potato casserole. I make it again and again throughout the week!
Making them really couldnt be simpler either!
I just add my steamer basket to my Instant Pot, scrub medium sweet potatoes clean and place them on top of the steamer basket, add my water and let the Instant Pot do all the work for me. When they are done, just let the Instant Pot release on the slow release setting and in minutes, you have the most tender and delicious sweet potatoes!
I know Ive shared how I also like to prepare them in my slow cooker. That method works wonderfully and is great for popping them into the slow cooker before you head out the door in the mornings so that they are ready for supper when you walk back in the door in the evenings.
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Allow Time For Natural Release
There are two ways to open an Instant Pot after cooking natural and manual.
Natural release means the pot depressurizes all on its own, which takes time. Manual release means you flip that valve on top from Sealing > Venting, and all the steam pours out the top until its depressurized enough to open.
Give your Instant Pot sweet potatoes about 10 minutes or so to naturally release. If you pop open the pot right when its done its unlikely the potatoes will be cooked through.
You can leave them for much longer than 10 minutes as well. Ive cooked mine and left the house for a couple of hours and come back and eaten them hot when I returned.
The Instant Pot Sweet Potato Hack
Now, here is my favorite hack for instant pot sweet potatoes. If you set the timer, and then you give them their 10 minutes of natural release, and then you open the lid, and poke them with a knife, and the knife doesnt glide through
then what?
Then, put the lid back on, lock it, and leave it on keep warm. Give them 10-20 more minutes to hang out in there and your problem will be solved.
If I cook a batch of sweet potatoes in my Instant Pot, and they are different sizes, this hack comes in handy.
I open it up, take out any of the smaller ones that are done, and then close it back up to let the fattys steam a little bit longer.
No need for sizing sweet potatoes, or cooking in different batches. Just a little patience and creative thinking will get the job done. Fluffy, Instant Pot sweet potatoes, of varying sizes, cooked and ready for your favorite sweet potato recipe. Which brings me to
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Scaling The Recipe Up Or Down
You can follow this recipe for any size of Instant Pot.
The number of sweet potatoes you can cook in your Instant Pot at once will vary based on the size of your sweet potatoes and the size of the Instant Pot model you own.
- I estimate 3 sweet potatoes will fit in the 3-quart and up to 8 could fit in the 8-quart, though Ive only tested this recipe in my 6-quart .
- I advise placing no more than 2 layers of sweet potatoes into the pot to ensure they cook evenly.
- The pressure cook time you set will stay the same regardless of how many sweet potatoes you cook.
- I havent tested this recipe with only one sweet potato, but I see no reason why that wouldnt work .
This recipe can also be cut in half for any size Instant Pot. No adjustments to the recipe are needed.
How Long To Cook Cubed Sweet Potatoes In Instant Pot
The pressure cooking time of sweet potatoes will vary based on the size of the cubes. I have made cubes of about an inch in size and that takes 5 minutes of steaming on the high-pressure mode in the instant pot.
If the cubes are cut smaller it can take about 3-4 minutes. In case after natural pressure release, the sweet potatoes are undercooked, you can pressure cook them once again for a minute or two and again perform a quick release.
Also Check: How To Use Instant Pot As Crock Pot
How Long To Steam Sweet Potatoes In The Instant Pot
Tip: To manually release the valve, I like to use the long handle of a wooden spoon covered in a kitchen towel, with my hand under the towel on the other end of the spoon.
Perfect Instant Pot Sweet Potatoes
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Perfect Instant Pot sweet potatoes each and every time, with perfect, creamy insides. A time chart based on the width of your sweet potatoes ensures they are perfectly cooked each time.
While I love a baked sweet potato and the convenience of a crock pot sweet potato, sometimes we just need to get it done quickly, right? Enter Instant Pot sweet potatoes. Ready in a fraction of the time, and they come out perfectly creamy, each and every time!
The thing is, there are way too many ‘one size fits all’ Instant Pot sweet potato recipes out there, and can we be real? Not all sweet potatoes are made the same, so why should the cooking method be?
After being constantly disappointed by under-cooked sweet potatoes, I set out to test dozens of sweet potatoes, until I came up with a formula so that you can have perfect sweet potatoes as well.
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How Do You Cook Sweet Potatoes In An Instant Pot
Instructions Place the steamer basket in the instant pot and add 1 cup of water. Rub the sweet potatoes until the skin is clean. Place in the steamer basket. Cover and set the vent hole of the lid to Sealing. Configure the Steam program and set the time to 10 minutes. When youre done, dont open the lid. Remove the lid and serve.
How To Cook Sweet Potatoes In The Instant Pot:
- Add water and a trivet to the Instant Pot. You only need a cup of water. Be sure that the potatoes are not touching the water.
- Be sure your potatoes are all the same size. Varying sizes mean varying cooking times. Be sure that your sweet potatoes are all about the same size, and use my cooking chart below to time things correctly.
- Pierce the potatoes. Piercing each potato with a fork 5 times ensures that they wont explode during cooking and that steam will escape.
- Natural pressure release for 10 minutes. Then release any remaining pressure.
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Potatoes Undercooked Heres What To Do
Make sure you still have about a cup of water in the Instant Pot, then put the lid back on. Bring to pressure and cook for an additional 2 to 3 minutes, depending on how hard your potatoes are. Then, let the pressure release naturally if you want the potatoes to cook longer. Alternately, do a quick release after cooking, before opening the lid.
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How To Serve Baked Potatoes
Baked Potatoes are delicious with butter, salt and pepper, chives, sour cream, and shredded cheese. Crumbled bacon also makes a delicious topping!
But, we also love to make a baked potato bar, which features the potato as part of the main dish.
These Turkey Taco Potato Boats are exactly what they sound like, potatoes topped with all the taco fixings!
Buffalo Chicken is also delicious on top of a baked potato!
Top your potato with steamed broccoli and queso! So good and easy too.
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How To Cook Sweet Potatoes In Instant Pot
Published Updated January 8, 2021 By Meeta Arora | This post may contain affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
How to cook perfect Sweet Potatoes in the Instant Pot? This is part of my Instant Pot Cooking Basics series. Sweet Potatoes cook to perfection in the instant pot…oh so tender and creamy. These pressure cooker “baked” sweet potatoes are fast & easy to cook, and make a delicious snack or side dish!
True story…my husband never liked sweet potatoes. But these silky smooth creamy sweet potatoes have finally converted him. Yay! Our favorite way to enjoy them is with lots of butter…salted butter of course.
Sweet potatoes are super nutritious, high in fiber and absolutely delicious. They are rich in beta carotene and Vitamix A. They are also low fat and have no cholesterol. Hence they are a great addition to a vegan & gluten-free diet.
Did you know sweet potatoes are also called yams? I grew up in India, and yams is what we called sweet potatoes.
I love to boil and steam veggies in the instant pot. I have shared how to boil russet potatoes and how to perfectly steam broccoli before.
The best thing of making instant pot sweet potatoes is you just put in the whole sweet potatoes, set the timer and forget them. Come back to creamy perfect moist sweet potatoes in less than an hour!
How To Make The Best Instant Pot Sweet Potatoes
Of all the things I make in my Instant Pot, theres nothing more convenient than a batch of sweet potatoes. Topped with a pat of butter and flaky salt, theyre a quick side to partner with whatever Im cooking. Loaded with beans and greens, they make a wholesome vegetarian dinner. Filled with yogurt or nut butter, and fruit, I have a nutritious breakfast.
Instant Pot sweet potatoes cook up with irresistibly tender, creamy centers, and pressure cooking them takes half as much time as baking them in the oven. Heres everything you need to know about making them.
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Instant Pot Sweet Potatoes Experiment
Optimal pressure cooking time is mostly dependent on the thickness of the food, rather than the weight.
So, when sweet potatoes come in all sorts of weird shapes and sizes, its a little tricky to pinpoint the perfect pressure cooking time for cooking sweet potatoes.
Theres no one-size-fits-all pressure cooking time to solving all the Instant Pot Sweet Potatoes mysteries.
Thats why some users have succeeded, while others have failed at making yummy whole Instant Pot Sweet Potatoes.
To avoid having more sweet potatoes suffer from being hard & undercooked or mushy & overcooked, its time for a Pressure Cooker Sweet Potatoes experiment!
Prep The Instant Pot For Steaming
Ensure the gasket is in the lid and the insert is inside of your Instant Pot. Now add 1 cup of water to the insert of the Instant Pot / electric pressure cooker. Place your vegetable steamer basket in too. I use a collapsible steamer basket that works great in regular pots and in electric pressure cookers. It is inexpensive, takes up little room in your cabinet, and works great. I highly recommend these.
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Is It Better To Steam Or Bake Sweet Potatoes
Logically, the longer you can keep the sweet potato within this temperature range, the more starch will get converted to sugar. Steaming and boiling cook the sweet potato too quickly, but baking it in the oven at 350°F or lower is perfect. Sweet potatoes are done when theyre soft all the way through.
Your Instant Pot Potato Cheat Sheet
The size of your potatoes is your guide for how long they should cook in the Instant Pot. Regardless of potato size, when the cook time is up, let the pressure naturally release for 10 minutes, then quick release any remaining pressure.
- Small sweet potatoes : 12 minutes under high pressure
- Medium sweet potatoes : 18 minutes under high pressure
- Large sweet potatoes : 25 minutes under high pressure
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How To Make Sweet Potatoes In Instant Pot:
- Liquid: 1 cup cold water
- Location: Sweet potatoes on the rack
- Pressure Cooking Method: High Pressure
- Pressure Cooking Time
- Preferences: fully cooked with some chew fully tender
- 6 inches: 15 20 mins
- 8 inches: 25 30 mins
- 10 inches: 35 40 mins
- 12 inches: 45 50 mins
*Pro Tip:Use this guide as a reference, please adjust accordingly to your texture preference and altitude.
