Ok guys, time to talk about something serious: the sweet potatoes from Family Mart.
We often buy sweet potatoes at home and I also have some growing in the balcony…
When I cook I always try to get them to taste and feel like those from Family Mart, but so far I’ve been failing non stop. The digua I cook at home never become as soft as those from Family Mart, and their digua are also very juicy while mine can become a bit dry,
I’m starting to think I may be missing something in the cooking process. Most recipes for baked digua are very simple: pierce it a bit, but it in the oven, wait X amount of time, done. The final result is ok, but not what I expect.
Does anyone have any suggestion? I was starting to think about adding a cup of water in the oven to add some moisture in the air. It’s something often done for backing cakes/cookies, but I’ve never tried it with potatoes.
There should be an attachment with your rice cooker to keep them out of the water, some sort of perforated tray like thing.
Are you putting the DiGua directly in the oven? If so, try wrapping them in tin foil instead can even put a little butter in the foil. If you’re using a small toaster oven type it may be that they’re simply too close to the heating element and are grilling rather than baking.
If you camp out at the Family Mart, you will see the illuminati sneaking sweet potatoes in a drawer right underneath the hot pebbles when no one is watching. That drawer is suppository an over that traps steam so that it does both things at the same time.
Traditionally sweet potatoes are baked in a dirty oven in the field with a processed referred to as khòng-iô (焢窯).
After the wood flame has turned the oven wall red, all firewood gets pulled out, and sweet potatoes are placed in wrapped with water paper. Then the dirty oven is knocked down, and the sweet potatoes are cooked by the heat from the dirty.
Family Mart sweet potato is imitating the taste of this khòng-iô method. Keeping the steam and the heat for more than 30 minutes seems to be the key to getting perfect sweet potatoes.
A suppository cooker…now that’s a cooking method I’ve never heard of before! I suppose it’s possible theoretically, but wouldn’t that affect the flavor?
that’s amazing, I didn’t know about this digua-cooking tech.
So it appears that I’m missing water/steam in my cooking process…
Considering that in Summer i’d prefer to avoid using the oven, I think I’ll try the rice cooker method, so letting them steam for a while. If that doesn’t work, I’ll try to bake them in the oven with some extra moisture, maybe by wrapping them and/or placing a cup of water in the oven.
Now I still have a stack of 5 cooked digua to finish, so I’ll eat them first than give it a try. Next time I want to have one, I’ll heat it using some steam to see if by absorbing some extra water it can improvbe the texture.
Yes definitely