- When making sweet potato fries, you need to slice the potatoes before baking them. I don’t know if my knives are sub par or if I’m just weak (probably both), but I always find it incredibly difficult to slice a rock hard sweet potato. After putting in a lot of elbow grease, I discovered that if you put the potato in the microwave for 1-2 minutes, it will soften up just enough to make cutting easier but not so much that it gets mushy. Seems like a no brainer, right? I consider myself a smart person but this idea did not come to me until at least my third or fourth time cooking sweet potatoes. Please don’t suffer the same way I did!