Roasted Japanese Sweet Potatoes

Currently, my pantry is very disorganized. My kitchen in my apartment has very little storage, so all of my snacks and pantry essentials are cluttered into one cabinet. I am trying to get either a rack to put my pantry items on or a storage bin. 

Some of my pantry essentials include olive oil, sunflower oil, flour, brown sugar, oats, and apple cider vinegar. 

I feel like overall I have adequate cooking supplies. I have a skillet, a large pot, a glass a baking pan and baking trays. Some things I still need are tongs, a peeler, a bigger collection of sharp knives, and a strainer. 

For the first cooking assignment, I made roasted Japanese sweet potatoes. I didn’t use a recipe because the ingredients are really simple and I have made sweet potatoes before. First, I set the oven for 400 degrees. Then I took 1 large Japanese sweet potato, rinsed it off really well and took off any eyes or gross parts. Next, I cut the sweet potato in half and started dicing from there. After it was diced to fairly equal size, I poured a decent amount of olive oil, enough to lightly coat the sweet potato. After this, I seasoned the sweet potato with a generous amount of paprika and several sprinkles of salt and pepper. Then I put the seasoned potatoes into a greased baking pan. Put them in the oven for about 30 minutes then take them out and mix them up and put them back in for about 15-20 minutes. 

I really like this snack especially with some BBQ sauce or sour cream. This was my first time making Japanese sweet potato and overall the process was the same but the taste and texture differ slightly. I had a difficult time cutting the sweet potato because it was huge and I only have one small sharp, not super sharp knife. I got a major arm workout while cutting it. In the future, I would also consider adding another fresh element to the dish to make it a little more interesting. I think chives and homemade dip would accompany this snack really nicely. I will be experimenting with other Japanese sweet potato recipes in the future.