Brown butter sage sauce drizzled over roasted sweet potatoes…and topped with a dusting of brown sugar and cinnamon! The perfect side dish!

Ingredients

  • 3 medium sweet potatoes (16 ounces)
  • 1 tsp olive oil
  • ¼ tsp salt and ¼ tsp pepper
  • 4 Tbsp firm salted butter(1/2 stick), cut into 1 Tbsp pats
  • 6 fresh medium sage leaves
  • 1 ½ Tbsp dark brown sugar, packed
  • ¼ tsp cinnamon

Tools & Timing

  • Cookie sheet
  • Lifting Spatula
  • Small saucepan
  • Kitchen scale (recommended)
  • Cutting board and sharp knife (or kitchen shears)
  • Heatproof rubber scraping spatula
  • Small prep bowl
  • Oven-safe serving dish(es)
  • Timing: about 40 minutes
  • Servings: 2-3

Background

Sweet potatoes are one of my food staples; I eat them all year. This year, I’ve been experimenting with sage…so when I came across a recipe for “Roasted Butternut Squash with Brown Butter and Sage” in one of my favorite cookbooks (comfortfood: warm and homey, rich and hearty by Rick Rodgers), I knew I wanted to tweak the recipe for sweet potatoes. Experiment One: I followed the recipe to a ‘T’ and simply substituted the sweet potatoes for the squash. The results were promising, but I wanted more of a sauce to coat my sweet potatoes. Experiment Two: after hunting for a recipe for a “Brown Butter Sage Sauce,” I was also intrigued by an idea to garnish this type of sauce with brown sugar…I added a touch of cinnamon (since it’s fall)…and created my new favorite Sweetly Savory Oven Roasted Sweet Potato recipe. Enjoy!

This recipe is adapted from Ciao Florentina

Use a kitchen scale to best ‘measure’ how many sweet potatoes you need…when chopping, try for 1 in. wedges…but don’t worry about perfection…slightly different-sized wedges will happen…and look more rustic

Step-by-step

  1. Preheat oven to 425.
  2. Weigh, wash, and chop sweet potatoes roughly into ½ in – 1 in cubes (see notes below).
  3. Place on baking sheet (you do not need to use aluminum foil, but you may), drizzle with olive oil, and toss with your hands to coat. In a small prep bowl, measure out salt and pepper and swirl them together. Sprinkle potato cubes with about half of the salt and pepper, toss so the other side of cubes is face up, and sprinkle again with the remaining salt and pepper. Rinse and dry this prep bowl – you will use it again for your sugar.
  4. Spread the pieces of sweet potatoes on the baking sheet into a single layer; make sure there is a bit of space between each cube (this helps them to roast better).
  5. Place in oven and set timer for 15 minutes.
  6. After 15 minutes, flip the cubes (after flipping all of the cube on one side, I rotate my baking sheet to both check that all cubes get flipped and to ensure that the cubes are baking evenly). Again, make sure they are in an even layer with space in between each cube; then, return them to the oven for an additional 15  minutes.
  7. When done, turn off the oven and open the oven door slightly. Allow the sweet potatoes to begin cooling slowly in the oven as you prepare the brown butter sage sauce (place your oven-safe serving dish(es) in the oven to warm).

Begin your Sauce

  • Wash, dry, and slice sage leaves. To slice them quickly, stack them in a pile and roll them into a tube. Holding the stems, slice them into ¼ in strips (you should have about ½ Tbsp of sliced leaves). Then, discard the stems.
  • Set a small saucepan over medium-low heat. Add pats of butter.
  • As butter begins to melt and foam (after about 1 min and 30 sec – it won’t be completely melted – see pics), sprinkle in your sage leaves. You may gently and carefully “tap” them into the butter; however, do not stir. Once they are tapped down so they are in the butter,  set a timer for 5 minutes. Do not touch or stir.
  • Sage leaves come in various sizes; from left to right are my idea of ‘small,’ ‘medium, and ‘large’ sage leaves
  • As the butter starts to foam, sprinkle in your sliced sage leaves…
  • As it is cooking, the butter will foam a lot and then begin to brown. This will take between 3-5 minutes. When the foam bubbles start to brown, your sauce is done (this occurs between 4-5 minutes for me).
  • Measure and stir your brown sugar and cinnamon together in cleaned prep bowl (I like to ‘whisk’ them together with a fork to ensure that I coated the wedges evenly with both). Keep an eye on your butter.
  • Once butter foam browns, remove from heat.
  • Remove potatoes from the oven.
  • Transfer to serving dish(es) and drizzle with butter. Toss to coat using a large spoon. Then, sprinkle with brown sugar and cinnamon. Toss again and serve!

Serve and Enjoy

These can be served in individual oven safe dishes (so cute) or one larger, oven safe serving dish!

Other Options

These potatoes store also well in the fridge; I’ve made them, saved them, and reheated them 3 days later…and they were still really good (if slightly more squishy). I did have to sprinkle with a little more brown sugar (since the sugar gets absorbed into the butter), but that’s ok, right?