I did not know that sweet potatoes need curing.

With proper curing they get sweeter and the skins toughen.

Ours did not get special treatment this year and those O'Henrys are super.

For those who eat without curing-- does the latex not taste bitter?

Latex? What do you mean?

The white syrup that oozes out of raw sweet potatoes (and regular potatoes, and squash too, but not yams!) is latex. It pretty much goes away when you cook it, doesn't it? Certainly the enzymes that people are allergic to in latex get destroyed by cooking.

I cure mine in a small bathroom with the electric heat turned on and a humidifier running. Much appreciated on those middle of the night visits when it is cold in the house.

I thought curing was more for storage capacity than for edibility? After curing, I keep mine at room temp -- when I've put them in colder, 50's, they get too sweet and I don't like them any more.

Well, I've just never eaten a sweet potato until I cured it. I suppose I should try one....So far I've gotten the air temp in that cooler up to 68 F.

Re: latex - Off topic, but I believe latex allergy is specific to latex from the rubber tree which is used to make commercial latex. Although people with latex allergy are sensitive to many fruits (kiwi, strawberry, etc), I've never heard of them being sensitive to sweet potatoes. -Liz

Do you think the store bought ones are cured?

I suspect that latex-sensitized people aren't all that sensitive to sweet potatoes because one never eats them raw. I think it isn't the latex per se that one is allergic to, but proteins in the latex that occur in fruits and vegetables. Those proteins are destroyed by heat.

Yes, I do think store bought sweet potatoes are cured. Grown commercially in the South, I presume they are plowed to expose them, then left exposed to the heat of day and night, as they lay on the ground, then hand picked up, loaded to bins, bins sitting out in the southern heat another day. Loaded to non-refrigerated trucks, trucks again sitting with their load in the southern heat. Eventually they get to their produce distribution points, where the pros know that they do not have to take up refrigeration space over night with the lettuce, berries, celery, and zucchini, etc. Then they get sorted and delivered to my grocery store where the produce managers know better than to waste refrigeration space on them at this point.

I've always cured the sweet potatoes I grew.

Here are more specifics from a university in Georgia

http://extension.uga.edu/publications/detail.cfm?number=B677#Curing

About the grocery store ones being cured -- though it makes sense that what they go through is sort of a curing process, I had always thought they were not, and that was why my home grown and cured ones would last all winter, and ones from the store will get mushy and rot so quickly.