sweet potato conversion breakthrough (sous vide)

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Owly055

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My GF loves sweet potatoes baked in the hide like an ordinary potato. I find them less than exciting, and decided to employ brewing technology in preparing them the other day. Using the sous vide, I dropped several into 135F for an hour, then raised it to 145 for couple of hours, then 150 for several more hours, and finally an hour at 155. I then let them cool overnight and baked them alongside several normal sweet potatoes. The results were phenomenal..... Far exceeding my wildest dreams. Pure ambrosia! The starch was likely fully converted leaving a rich sweet full flavored "pudding" inside the skins of the sous vide ones.

While I no longer brew, this technique would make a wonderful ingredient for a brew. Mashing right in the skins using sous vide for temp control is a great and simple technique.... just drop them right in the water.... try it, you'll be amazed.... I haven't done it without the baking step (350 for an hour), but I suspect that raising the temp to 190 or so for several hours in the sous vide would accomplish more or less the same thing.....?

H.W.
 
Sorry for focusing on the food side instead of brewing, but I’m interested in learning more.

Did you bake the potatoes with foil on them, or unwrapped?
 
What would have converted potato starch to sugars? Do sweet potatoes come complete with enzymes?

Cheers!
Yup - sweet potatoes are loaded with beta-amylase. There was a thread around here not too long ago about a guy using sweet potato juice to jump-start a stuck fermentation.
 
Sorry for focusing on the food side instead of brewing, but I’m interested in learning more.

Did you bake the potatoes with foil on them, or unwrapped?

I baked them on the rack... no foil. I just finished a second batch... all sous vide, that I will run through my Omega auger juicer to produce a peanut butter consistency paste that I will spread on dehydrator sheets to make chips..... nothing will be added except for lightly salting the surface.

H.W.
 
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