Roasted Sweet Potatoes

Method

1. dice8 min
   even 1 inch cubes, skin left on
   sweet potato into pieces as close to identical as you can manage. Evenness matters more here than in most roasting, because these go from firm to collapsing over a narrow window — a tray of mixed sizes gives you scorched small cubes beside raw large ones with no moment when both are right
2. season3 min
   large bowl, oil first, then the dry seasonings
   + olive oil tossed to coat, then + salt + smoked paprika + pepper (+ cinnamon, + cayenne). Oil before spice so the spice has something to stick to. Hold any honey back — sugar added now would be black long before the interior cooked
3. roast25 min
   220°C, preheated tray, single layer with gaps, turned once at 15 minutes
   until the undersides are deeply caramelised and a knife meets no resistance at the centre. Two different reactions are running: Maillard browning between the sugars and amino acids above about 150°C, and straightforward caramelisation of the sugars the vegetable already has, which is why sweet potato browns faster and darker than an ordinary potato and needs watching in the last five minutes
4. glaze4 min
   last 4 minutes only, if using honey
   + honey tossed through and returned to the oven briefly. Added at the start it burns; added at the end it thickens on the hot surface into a proper glaze. Skip it entirely if the potatoes were sweet to begin with — you can taste one at the twenty minute mark and decide
5. season2 min
   off the tray, hot
   to taste (+ lime juice, + cilantro). Acid at the end is what keeps this from reading as dessert — sweet potato has enough sugar that without something sharp it flattens out by the third forkful. Serve straight away; they soften as they cool and the crisp faces go leathery within fifteen minutes