I was just given a big pile of sweet potatoes and while I've got recipes like "chop them up into sticks, soak in salt water, and then fry them until I think they're done" and "cube them and boil in curry or other heavily spiced stews for ~15 minutes" that all work very well, that's sort of the limit of what I know for them and I want to actually get use out of them before they can spoil.
So I started wondering about making bread, but every recipe I can find seems to just be "this is literally a cake that's being called bread and it's almost 50% table sugar by volume," but that can't be the extent of options can it? There have to be some savory recipes that just rely on the sugar of the sweet potatoes themselves, right?
Im not an expert because i've only been a professional cook for 2 months but imo i'd try roasting or frying them first before adding to a stew because you're not going to get browning (which is the caramelization of surface sugars and proteins via maillard reactions) if you just throw them straight into a boil and you're robbing yourself of Flavor because that's what those maillard products are.
You don't get maillard reactions with water present because it limits the temperature to the boiling point of water (this is also why you can't crowd too much stuff into a pan and see browning, all the water content steams whatever you're cooking until it's boiled off) so fry then add water to boil
That's basically what I started out doing, frying to brown them a little first. The problem is that they soften up too much before they brown, so they practically melt into the curry instead of remaining as a distinct solid ingredient. I started cooking them less after trying massaman curry at a thai restaurant, and looking up recipes for that to learn from the methodology of it (and for that the potatoes or sweet potatoes just get boiled for 15-20 minutes, just long enough to soften up enough to eat without melting or falling apart).
Okay so imo if you want them as solid chunks as a mouthfeel thing the immediate next thing I would try is roasting/frying some, then adding the rest raw to boil, so you get the flavors of roasted, caramelizing sweet potato as well as the inclusion of solid chunks of potato. More flavor variety more good imo, and the dissolving cooked sweet potatoes would help thicken the curry as well