America's Test Kitchen LogoCook's Country LogoCook's Illustrated Logo

Don’t Toss Those Sweet Potato Peels: Make Soup

For the most flavorful sweet potato soup, get some skins in the game.
By

Published Feb. 23, 2022.

Don’t Toss Those Sweet Potato Peels: Make Soup

When Lan Lam developed her sweet potato soup, she wanted the flavorful star of the show to be, not spices, cream, or stock, but sweet potato. To get the perfect concentrated taste, in addition to plenty of pureed potato, she added in some of the sweet potatoes' skins. 

Although adding too much of the skin produced a murky soup, a modest amount of pureed cooked skin gives the soup earthy depth. 

In addition, adding the sliced potatoes to boiling water and then steeping them off the flame for 20 minutes encourages starch in the tubers to convert into sugar, yielding a sweeter soup with a less stodgy consistency that doesn't require the addition of water to thin it out.

Here’s how the soup comes together:

1. Cook aromatics in butter, then add water and bring to a simmer.
2. Remove pot from heat, add sweet potatoes and their peels, and let steep for 20 minutes.
3. Season and simmer until potatoes are very soft, about 10 minutes.
4. Puree soup in blender.
Recipe

Classic Mashed Sweet Potatoes

Bake, boil, or steam? None of these methods is the right one for the best texture and flavor.
Get the Recipe
Equipment Review

The Best High-End Blenders

We investigate the new crop of pricey blenders to see what you get—and whether it’s worth it—when the sky’s the limit.
Read Our Review
Recipe

The Best Sweet Potato Pie

The problem with most sweet potato pies is that they are pumpkin pies in disguise. Our challenge was to create a blue-ribbon dessert that still tasted like sweet potatoes.
Get the Recipe

0 Comments

This is a members' feature.