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Comment by Buttons840 | Hacker News Reader

I wanted to say something in favor of sweet potatoes, so did some research:

[0] says:

The best lettuce has 2.5mg of beta-carotene in 47g of lettuce. The best sweet potato has 31mg of beta-carotene in 328g of sweet potato (sweet potatoes are the beta-carotene leader BTW :strong:).

If this modified lettuce can really have 30 times as much beta-carotene, that's a significant amount. I was expecting the numbers to show that lettuce had almost no beta-carotene, and after you times it by 30 it's still almost nothing, but apparently it's more significant than that.

[0]: https://ods.od.nih.gov/pubs/usdandb/VitA-betaCarotene-Conten...

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Oh, also, if you want a stupidly easy way to eat sweet potatoes, cut one up into bite sized chunks and cook it at 350 fahrenheit for 45 minutes or longer (it won't burn easily at that temperature). No need to remove the skin, but wash it first. They aren't bad even plain. This is an easy no-preperation-necessary to get at least 1 veggie.

I love baked sweet potato fries. I don’t care if they tend to be softer, that natural sweetness is just so good.

Great idea but I hope you dont mind if I’ll do you one better: cook that same potato in a closed container (could be a bowl with a dish on top) in the microwave on high for 4 minutes. It’ll be almost as delicious, maybe more nutritious, for 1/10 the time and electricity.

I prefer to peel the sweet potatoes, cut them in relatively big chunks, then bake them without adding anything, in a closed glass vessel, in a microwave oven.

The baking time depends on the oven and on the quantity, but for example in my 1000 W oven, baking 3 big sweet potatoes needs about 8 minutes.

Once you have made a successful test, this method is very fast and perfectly reproducible. Because there is no added water and a part of the water from the sweet potatoes evaporates (but not too much, due to the closed glass vessel), the taste of the sweet potatoes cooked in this way is very intense.

As always Cooks Illustrated goes into great detail and there's a link to their final recipe. I've tried it and it is wonderful. https://www.americastestkitchen.com/cooksillustrated/article...

My go to recipe from the past few years: 1. preheat over to 400° 2. cut the potato in half long ways 3. put it on a baking sheet cut side down. no oil, no foil 4. bake for around 40 min or until a knife goes through smoothly 5. peel the skin off and eat

it's a nice mushy texture that works as a base or add on for bowl style meals and takes moments to prepare and get in the oven. I usually throw it into an almost cold oven and just add 5 min to the cook time.

I came for the genetics but stayed for the recipes.

came to say that sweet potato has high levels of oxolates, if your gut doesn't work properly that can cause all kinds of things

You can reduce the oxalate content by boiling, steaming, and apparently even blanching the sweet potatoes, but not that boiling will reduce the beta carotene content by a lot.

Alternatively, consuming calcium (milk, cheese, etc) with your oxalate-rich food will minimize absorption of the oxalate.

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