Easy Oven Roasted Rosemary Sweet Potatoes

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When I want an easy vegetable for dinner, I often turn to this recipe for Rosemary Sweet Potatoes. Rosemary adds a lovely herbal flavor while, roasting brings out the sugars in the sweet potatoes. This easy to prepare recipe will become your favorite vegetable dish. Serve it with homemade Shake and Bake Pork Chops for a dinner even the kids will love!

How to make this recipe

I actually make these sweet potatoes quite a bit because they go well with so many main courses and they take only a few minutes to prepare. Toss sweet potatoes in olive oil, with Rosemary, salt and pepper and pop them in the oven. You don’t even have to peel them. That is it! Then you are free to move on to another task.

You can cut them into any shape you like, just make sure the pieces are all a similar size so that the sweet potatoes cook evenly. I like to cut them into 2 – 3-inch chunks, but you can also cut them into steak fries as well.

Are Sweet Potatoes and Yams the same thing?

I always thought that sweet potatoes and yams were just different names for the same thing. But, as it turns out, they are not even in the same plant family. Although they are both underground tubers, they are very different vegetables.

Sweet potatoes are a starchy sweet tasting tuber which has been cultivated to have skin and flesh of different colors. The most common in the US is the brownish skin and orange flesh variety. They originated in Central or South America, but North Carolina is where the largest quantity is grown today.

Yams originate from Africa and are long and tubular in shape. They have a light-colored flesh and skin that is hard to peel unless heated. Depending on the species, yams can grow to be much larger than sweet potatoes. They have been known to get as long as 49 feet! Yams are also starchier, less sweet, and not as moist as sweet potatoes.

One of the interesting things that I learned researching these vegetables is that Yams are not readily available in the US. So, it is not likely that many of us have ever seen them in our local grocery store. There may be a couple of reasons why there is so much confusion between yams and sweet potatoes. One thought is that African slaves in the south called the sweet potatoes “Nyame” which translates to “yam’ in English. Another reason is that to distinguish the darker skinned sweet potato from the lighter skinned variety, grocers called them yams.

What pair with this vegetable?

Sweet potatoes store better than almost any other vegetable and for this reason, it is available all year round. So, you can serve sweet potatoes at your summer barbecue just as well as you can with your Thanksgiving turkey. This recipe really pairs well with barbecue and smoked meats. They are a great side for grilled steak, roast chicken, seafood, or fish as well.

This is also a great recipe to include in your vegan or Whole 30 diet plan. If you would like to get more information on the many health benefits of sweet potatoes you can read this article from healthline.

Here are a couple of recipes that you can pair Rosemary Sweet Potatoes with to create a delicious meal:

Easy Herb Roasted Chicken

The Best Beef on Weck

Simple Oven Roasted Rosemary & Balsamic Marinated Pork Tenderloin

Lemon Pepper Salmon with Dill

Other potato recipes

Easy Steak Fries

Oven Roasted Potatoes and Broccoli

Italian Green Beans with Potatoes