This luscious sweet potato puree recipe is silky smooth! Serve it as a side dish, or use it as a component of other recipes.

Here’s a creamy side dish that’s perfect on any plate: Sweet Potato Puree! This lusciously creamy puree is light and sweet: ideal for serving with a savory protein like roast chicken or seared fish. It tastes restaurant style: especially when you serve the protein perched on top! Serve it at fall meals and it will be the talk of the table: we promise! It’s great for impressing guests at a dinner party, Thanksgiving, or even made ahead for a weeknight meal.

How to make sweet potato puree

Sweet potato puree is similar to mashed, but it’s whizzed in a food processor until it’s light and fluffy. This gives it a luscious texture that makes it taste more elevated than a simple mash. We tasted them back to back, and it was no contest: sweet potato puree was the hands-down winner! Here’s the basic method (or jump right to the recipe):

Steam the sweet potatoes. The quickest way to cook sweet potatoes for this puree? Steaming them! If you’ve got a large steamer basket, it takes just 30 minutes. Go to Steamed Sweet Potatoes.
Or, roast the sweet potatoes. You can also roast the potatoes. Using our Quick Baked Sweet Potatoes method makes it fast and easy: much faster than the traditional whole baked method.
Scoop out the flesh. Use a spoon or fork to scoop out the sweet potato flesh.
Puree! Place it in a food processor and puree for 30 seconds to 1 minute with butter, salt and additional seasonings (see below!).

Seasonings as a side dish

Sweet potato puree tastes absolutely incredible as is! In fact, you can make this sweet potato puree as baby food and make it without any seasonings, except salt. But to season it for a special dinner, here are the flavors we suggest adding:

Parmesan cheese: Add ¼ cup shredded Parmesan cheese for the best savory flavor
Garlic powder and cumin: Just a hint of each (⅛ teaspoon) really amps the flavors
Dried sage: ⅛ to ¼ teaspoon dried sage brings a rich, autumnal flavor
Dried thyme: Thyme also adds rich flavor; add about ¼ teaspoon dried or 1 teaspoon minced fresh

Vegan variation

Want to make a dairy free or vegan sweet potato puree? Don’t worry: it doesn’t require Parmesan or butter. Here’s what to do:

Substitute vegan butter or refined coconut oil for the butter
Omit the Parmesan cheese
Add a bit more salt to taste, or even a few teaspoons nutritional yeast for added savory flavor

Ideas for serving sweet potato puree

Once you’ve got that light and fluffy sweet potato puree, you can serve it in all sorts of different ways. Our favorite? Topped with a savory protein. The way the light, sweet puree enhances each bite of savory protein is unreal! It tastes restaurant style, but as you can see it’s an incredibly simple concept. Here are some of our favorite ways to serve it:

Roasted chicken
Seared tuna
Baked salmon or seared salmon
Seared scallops
Sautéed shrimp
Pork tenderloin
Stuffed mushrooms
Tofu or tempeh

Recipes that use sweet potato puree

Another thing you can do with sweet potato puree? Use it in baking recipes! Now, you technically can just use mashed sweet potato in sweet potato recipes. But if you have leftover unseasoned puree, it works in other baked recipes like:

Sweet Potato Muffins
Sweet Potato Brownies
Sweet Potato Bread

More sweet potato recipes

The sweet potato is one of our top vegetables to add to meals! Here are a few more sweet potato recipes to try:

Try a quick Perfect Microwave Sweet Potato
Make classic Roasted Sweet Potatoes, Sweet Potato Curry or Sweet Potato Soup
Bake up Sweet Potato Muffins or Sweet Potato Bread
Bake a Baked Sweet Potato, then load it for Stuffed Sweet Potatoes
Grab a Sweet Potato Salad
Make Sweet Potato Black Bean Enchiladas

Roasted Sweet Potatoes

Perfect Microwave Sweet Potato

Sweet Potato Salad

This recipe is…

Vegetarian and gluten-free. For vegan, plant-based, and dairy-free, see the notes in the Vegan section above.