Many years ago we were told that the more sap a sweet potato has, the sweeter it would be. Okay, I get it: Baking a sweet potato in the oven can take 45 minutes to an hour, or a mere 5 minutes in the microwave. It's quite sweet. Take them out from the plastic bag and place them in a basket, box, or bowl. If this sounds like you, it may be time to take a closer look at your nutrition, as the foods you eat can either help or hinder your recovery from mold illness. It is the sap. Does it not look like the bulging bicep of a cartoonishly muscular potato person? What’s really happening here is that, possibly in reaction to hot, dry weather, or some other stress back in the field, this sweet potato merged two different types of root structures. Some common traits of bad sweet potatoes are discoloration and growths through the skin. Anyway, moving on. Using the microwave to cook sweet potatoes. Sweet potatoes need a loamy soil with a pH between 5.0-6.5. The milky substance you referred to is normal. The flesh has some yellow parts on in in addition to the usual beige/off white color, and the skin on one looks like it has like thick veins inside it. The sweet potato plant is a branching, creeeping vine with spirally arranged lobed, heart shaped leaves and white or lavender flowers. The sweet potatoes I buy often have mold growing on them. Store-bought sweet potatoes are easy to keep. Sweet potatoes are susceptible not only to a variety of diseases that cause rotting as they are growing, but also of sweet potato storage rots. Sweet potato, Ipomoea batatas, is an herbaceous perennial in the family Convolvulaceae grown for its edible storage roots. Sweet potatoes aren’t finicky about the texture of the ground they grow in, but if your soil is full of rocks and clumps, you may end up with oddly shaped potatoes at the end of the season. The plant has enlarged roots called tubers which act as an energy store for the plant. Do not refrigerate raw sweet potatoes. Many times when baking whole sweet potatoes this sap will ooze out and look like syrup. I usually just cut out the visible parts but leave the skin on, and bake it for 1.5 hours at 350 f. A number of bacterial and fungal pathogens cause storage rot of sweet potatoes. We've had some sweet potatoes siting around on the counter for a while. The only problem is that the microwave cooks the potato unevenly, remaining hard and lumpy in … Get this: In their own skins, sweet potatoes cook up to only 103 calories a pop. If part of the sweet potato goes bad, the whole potato should be thrown out as the flavor is affected. – Cindy Aug 9 '17 at 15:56 You should amend your soil with lots of rich organic matter and make sure that it is well drained. Just like homegrown ones, they belong in a cool, dark place, away from heat and moisture, such as your pantry or basement. They will begin to get soft and wet (water will leak out) and then turn brown and/or black. The following article contains information on diseases that can result in sweet potatoes rotting after harvest and how to control sweet potato rot during storage. I started to cut them up to roast but not sure if they're too old. How to eat sweet potatoes before they go bad. Read on to learn how optimal nutrition can aid in mold illness recovery by supporting detoxification, restoring gut health, and quenching inflammation caused by toxic mold exposure. Then, there are these 52 ways to love sweet potatoes from the North Carolina Sweet Potato Commission. How about sweet potato pancakes or sweet potato and ginger soup or sweet potato and black bean enchiladas?