They’re usually associated with fall dishes, but sweet potatoes can be enjoyed all year long, and Valerie Bertinelli just gave us some delicious inspiration.

On a recent segment of The Drew Barrymore ShowBertinelli showed host Drew Barrymore and Saturday Night Live star Chloe Fineman how to make an easy, rave-worthy side dish: hasselback sweet potatoes with a roasted pistachio topping.

“Whenever I eat, I like to get a lot of different textures, flavors; I like sweet, I like salty, I like crunchy,” Bertinelli says, and these sweet potatoes provide a fusion of flavors and textures that you’re going to love once you try them.

To hasselback the sweet potatoes, Bertinelli places a chopstick on each side of the potato she’s cutting and slices down until her knife hits the chopsticks. This causes the potato to not be cut all the way through, instead creating slots that will be useful in absorbing all the flavors later.

On the sliced potatoes, Bertinelli brushes melted butter seasoned with paprika, salt, pepper and garlic powder in and on the spuds. The melted butter mixture gets into the crevices on the potatoes, and once brushed, they go into a 450 degree oven for 35 to 40 minutes, basted again mid-bake.

For the topping, the former Hot in Cleveland star sauteed pistachios in a buttered pan with salt, paprika, chili powder, garlic powder, onion powder and sugar for a mildly sweet, protein-packed topping for the sweet potatoes. Bertinelli says roasting the pistachios “brings out the flavor” in the nuts, giving extra nuttiness to each bite.

Once the sweet potatoes are out of the oven and topped with the seasoned pistachios, they are ready to serve. When Barrymore takes a bite, she says it’s “incredible” with Fineman agreeing that the simple side is “amazing.”

Sweet potatoes are a great source of potassium and vitamin A, and while Barrymore calls them “the key to longevity,” our senior nutrition editor Jessica Ball, M.S., RD, wouldn’t go that far.

“Sweet potatoes are packed with a bunch of longevity-supporting nutrients, and they can definitely be part of a healthy eating pattern no matter your age,” shares Ball. “That said, the ‘key to longevity’ is including a variety of produce, protein, healthy fats and sources of fiber to meet your overall nutritional needs. It also has to do with maintaining a healthy lifestyle with regular exercise, quality sleep, stress management and social support. No one food in isolation guarantees healthy aging.”

But there’s no debating that these hasselback sweet potatoes are a nutrient-packed, delicious side to pair with a high-protein main dish, like Crispy Roast Chicken with a leafy green salad. Hasselback sweet potatoes are also completely customizable, and we love topping them off with garlic yogurt sauce or even marshmallows to mimic nostalgic Thanksgiving casserole.