You! Stop! Drop those marshmallows! Before you make a mistake you'll regret, consider this recipe instead.
Grammy Althea's Marshmallow-Free, Awesome-Full Stove Top Sweet Potatoes
You'll Need
- Sweet potatoes, probably about two pounds, peeled and chopped into thick hunks. Two pounds is approximate. You should have enough sweet potatoes, when chopped, to fill your skillet.
- 1 stick of butter
- 1 pound of brown sugar
- Water
- Cast-iron skillet
Instructions
1. Fill cast-iron skillet with peeled and chopped sweet potatoes.
2. Add enough water to not-quite-cover the sweet potatoes.
3. Cut stick of butter into pats and add it to the skillet. Add entire 1 lb. bag of brown sugar to the skillet as well.
4. Bring to a boil. Then reduce heat and simmer, uncovered, for about an hour. The liquid should become thick and bubbly, like a gooey delicious tar pit. Sweet potatoes are done when they are soft and glazed-looking.
Image courtesy Flickr user nataliemaynor, via CC
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Equal parts sugar and sweet potatoes? Are you sure that's what you meant? A pound of sweet potatoes is approximately 2 of them. . .
I've adjusted that a little. Basically, you need enough sweet potatoes so that the skillet is full of them. It really doesn't take all that much. And yes, that is indeed a crap-ton of sugar. ;)
Sweet potatoes are already, well sweet. I don't understand the added sweetness of brown sugar. Butter, seasonings, that's all you really need. And yes, I realize the brown sugar makes a glaze as it caramelizes, but that's just basically icing at that point.
Shun the unbeliever! Shun! ;)
For those who live in countries where butter comes in pats, how heavy is a stick of butter?
eurk!
Way
Too
Sweet...
That much sugar is inappropriate as a side dish unless you think a snickers bas is a main dish.
My favorite SP recipe adds some concentrated Orange juice to the mix (enough to taste, not enough to drown out the SP flavor) & a light glazing of carmelized brown sugar.
1/4 of a pound, I believe. At least, the package of four sticks is 1 pound. #Iamnotacook
One stick of butter is approximately 113g, if you're metrically-minded.
Adding refined sugar to a sweet potato dish is a little daft..
better recipe:
1KG Sweet Potato cut into slices 5 mm thick
Tablespoon of Olive Oil
Fresh red chilli, chopped finely
1 clove of garlic, chopped finely
284ml single cream
mix all of this in a bowl
place in an oven proof receptacle - lasagne dish is ideal. make sure the potato slices are laid out flat.
cook in a preheated oven at 180 centigrade until the thing looks crispy but has not dried out
from bbc food
Why do people want to add sugar to sweet potatoes when they are already sweet? I like to just toss them in the oven until the sweet potato shrinks away from the skin. Then you can peel the skin away starting from one end and eat it like an ice cream cone, or just peel it and slice or mash it if you want.
Our family has always had sweet potatoes grilled in butter and brown sugar at Christmas.
More recently I've enjoyed just roasting them with a bit of olive oil and garlic.
They're pretty good cooked just about any way.
I don't think I've *ever* had sweet potatoes with extra sweetener -- brown sugar, sugar, or marshmallows (?????). I like them either deep-fried in tempura batter or roasted with some butter/olive oil and herbs. There's plenty of flavour there already.
Seriously, though, marshmallows? I gotta Wiki this.
(Canadian here.)
Here's what I like to do with my sweet potatoes: Grate them up, then grate up a less than equal amnt. of parsnips, add some ginger and lemon, fry in olive oil. Once it all starts to lose colour and start to brown, add raisins and give them another two minutes. Then eat 'em. It's sweet and quick and easy, and doesn't involve butter or refined sugar.
It's even easier than that- you don't have to peel it. The skin tastes good, and is good for you.
And when you're camping, just throw the potatoes in the coals. No foil or nothing. You probably won't want to eat the skin when you cook them this way. There is a famous painting of Francis Marion negotiating with a British officer in which they are eating sweet potatoes out of the fire. The officer reported to his superiors that the Colonials dress in rags, live in the swamp, and eat nothing but tubers. "This they do in the name of Liberty. Against such an enemy we have no chance."
Happy Thanksgiving, folks!
I have tried making some American dishes and after a couple of awful ones the first thing I do is halve the recipe's sugar.
One recipe was a sweet potato dish. I literally gagged.
Seriously, how can you eat such sickly food.
Mine is sort of similar - start with orange juice, brown sugar, and grated ginger, reduce into a thickened sauce, peel and chop up sweet potatoes while reducing, pour sauce over sweet potatos, bake/roast to taste.
Although in a crisis I have used ginger beer and orange juice concentrate, and then just cooked the whole damn mess in a microwave. Still quite tasty! I wouldn't use ginger ale, however, for the fast version - too much sugar and not enough ginger in the final tastes after cooking.
You could also mash the final product, I suppose. And then you have an excuse to put a bunch of butter in there :D
In this version, the reason to start with regular-strength orange juice and reduce, instead of just starting with the concentrate, is to cook the ginger flavor into the sauce. The rapid version with ginger beer needs concentrate to make up for all the extra water in the beer.
I'm so glad I'm not the only one shocked and horrified by the vast quantity of sugar this recipe calls for. According to an ingredient conversion website, 1 pound of brown sugar is approximately 2 1/4 cups! Non-US boingers, please do not think this is representative of most Americans' palates.
Yeah, seriously. Marshmallows (shudder).
oh my god, sweet potatoes are so good with brown sugar. In my family's thanksgiving, they are more of a dessert than a side dish. I don't think we ever put THAT much brown sugar in them, but it sounds absolutely wonderful anyway. Do you people not like sweet potato pie?
I mean, I eat sweet potatoes without brown sugar, too, but that's when I want them to act like a side.
The only (common) way to go wrong with sweet potatoes (in my opinion) is to put a ton of marshmallows on them. It's not the right kind of sweet!
Hey, how about a quick poll? Who here has a tradition of marshmallows and/or brown sugar added to sweet potatoes/yams? Marshmallows added to any dish? And most importantly, are also of some British extraction but have been in North America for several generations? I'm being too polite. What I mean is, are the marshmallow-brown sugar people WASPs? Okay, I'm being way too polite. Are you folks without an ethnicity of any kind?
Those who find the notion of these ingredients in mains or sides rather odd, if not distasteful, are, and I am going to go out on a limb here, children of immigrants, or are non-WASPs in some way.
All I know is, when my sister married a WASP (our family is German and Hungarian) we were invited to dinners at the in-laws with such culinary delights as candied yams and "trifles", a catch-all name for deserts with about a dozen ingredients, usually candied fruit, dried fruit, marshmallows, Cool Whip and other such items arranged in layers.
Now, Germans are not innocent when it comes to food horrors. I grew up with mostly grey food. But I've always been somewhat aghast at the WASP notion of food.
And Gloria, Canadian WASPs are just as bad, possibly worse. I'm from Southern Ontario with its proud tradition of Scottish-English fare.
I always found the marshmallow-yam combination gag-worthy. The first time I heard about it (Paula Deen), my gag-reflex actually kicked in.
I grew up hating sweet potatoes because everyone does them with sugar or other sweeteners, and usually cinnamon, nutmeg, etc.. It wasn't until I tried making my own, with SAVOURY options that I realized how great they were. Forget the sugar entirely.
Use a little salt, pepper, and your favourite herbs and spices for some great sweet potatoes.
Just to be a stick in the mud, the picture is of yams not sweet potatoes. The difference yams grow in chains end to end, and sweet potatoes grow individually.
I have never understood adding sugar or marshmallows to sweet potatoes. They're so good with just their own sweetness.
Here's my family's Thanksgiving recipe:
TRULY, TRULY WONDERFUL BOURBONED SWEET POTATOES & YAMS
4 1/2 lbs. mixed yams & sweet potatoes
3/4 cups butter, softened
1/3 cup bourbon (or other whiskey)
1/2 tsp salt
2 tablespoons butter
1/2 cup coarsely chopped walnutes
Bake yams & potatoes in their jackets in a hot oven (say, 400 degrees) for 1 hour or until soft. Scoop out the meat and beat it with the soft butter, bourbon, and salt. Put the mixture in a shallow greased baking dish. Dot with the remaining 2 tablespoons butter and walnuts.
Bake at 350 for 20 minutes.
While I detest sweet potatoes I might could actually stomach them with that thick syrupy glaze...
My in-laws make a baked sweet potato, that is basically cut in half and then a light sprinkle of brown sugar. As it cooks the sugar forms a nice sweet layer kind of like a creme brulee expect for the crunchy part.
@15 - freshacconci
I'm from southern Ontario too, and my family is of british "extraction" and no one in my family would ever think of putting marshmallows in food (unless it's a rice crispy square) or of putting that much sugar in anything! Hell, we'd eat roasted parsnips and buttered brussel sprouts before we'd eat this sugary monstrosity!
And your description of trifle makes me sad. Trifle is not "a catch-all name for deserts with about a dozen ingredients, usually candied fruit, dried fruit, marshmallows, Cool Whip and other such items arranged in layers" - My Nana would smack you for trying to put Cool Whip on the trifle! Cool Whip is NOT food! Trifle is sponge cake soaked in sherry and encased in jello then a lay of fruit (Canned or fresh), then add a layer of custard and top that with a layer of REAL whipped cream. THAT is trifle, no candied fruit, dried fruit, marshmallws (EW!) or /shudder "Cool Whip".
I'm sorry your experience of folks "folks without an ethnicity of any kind" has been so lacking, you need to find a family that has roast beef and yorkshire pudding for Xmas dinner and hang out with them, they'll know what WASP cooking is actually all about. :)
I was just throwing in the "Canadian" because Canada and US are the only countries that celebrate Thanksgiving, and given that nobody here I've met serves sweet potatoes with marshmallows, I was wondering whether it was an American thing, and a simple cultural difference.
To be totally honest, I have never quite grasped what a "WASP" meant. Or, I thought I did, but all the people I know that I'd describe as "WASPs" would be completely horrified at the idea of marshmallows served for Thanksgiving.
My boyfriend was just as confused and scared as I was at this idea, and yeah, he's as white as they come. He did grow up in a house with a very serious cook though.
I grew up with and enjoy sweet potatoes with marshmallows, and I always understood it as a southern thing, coming from my Texas-born mother. But we're pretty darn WASPy, apart from being Catholic.
Actually, I need to clarify something. I am really talking about some sort of "Canadian" or "American" idea of cuisine. Those who are described as such are generally of a British background, way back. When my father describes someone as Canadian, he means those folks, and my father's been a Canadian citizen since he was 22. But like a lot of people from elsewhere, the dominance of WASPy culture always left my father seeing people who've been here for several generations as "proper" Canadians.
Having said that, I am a complete Anglophile. The Beatles, Monty Python, the whole thing. If I could afford it, I'd live in London. I used to wear Beatle Boots. But that's another story.
My mother's best friend was one of those "Canadians" and her mother taught mine how to cook, so we always had Sunday roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, still my favourite meal. I had the best version in a pub in York that Dickens used to frequent. So, British cuisine proper is actually quite good. I just wanted to clarify that.
I defy all your butter and sugar! Sweet potatoes need nothing!
World's Simplest (and best, in my opinion) Sweet Potato Recipe
This works really well since you can allow the sweet potatoes to cook while having dinner.
1. Preheat overn to 425 degrees.
2. Place whole sweet potatoes on middle oven rack.
3. Bake 20 miutes
4. Turn oven to "warm" setting
5. Bake additional 20-30 minutes
6. Serve hot.
The additonal baking time allows the sugars inside the sweet potato carmelize, leaving a thin crust similar to creme brulee. Enjoy.
The recipe for candied sweet potatoes goes back generations in both side of my families, although I don't know where it comes from. I believe the prediliction for extremely sweet and high fat dishes stems from the times when those were both scarce.
White Anglo Saxon Protestant. But I don't think being white, English, or protestant gives any particular group a monopoly on either unhealthy or tasteless food (in either sense).
BTW, sweet potatoes have a smooth skin, whether whitish, orangish, or yellowish, no matter what is says on the bin, can, or package. Real yams grow in Africa and they have "a rough skin which is difficult to peel."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yam_(vegetable)
With that much butter and sugar, an old boot would be palatable. I'm firmly in the "savory" sweet potatoes camp.
BTW. Did I completely hijack this thread and turn it into some sort of anti-WASP thing? Oddly enough, at this very moment I've apparently hijacked a Facebook thread, turning that discussion into links to Prussian Blue videos. I really didn't intend this in either case...
Ya'll are so bourgeois with your sweet potato tastes.
Whatever happened to tradition? Whatever happened to special occasion food? Obviously this is not something meant to be eaten daily. It's not even meant to be eaten in quantity- just a spoonful.
My darling grandmother will be bringing the mini-marshmallows to our Thanksgiving dinner- every year she makes 'Fluff' which includes (as far as I can deduct) whole berry cranberry sauce, mini-marshmallows and 'real' whipped cream (at least it's not Cool Whip).
Hmm, while I don't think the dish would be to my taste (I also don't have any cultural predilection to dessert-like sweet potato dishes), I find there is a surprising amount of ethnocentrism in this thread.
Why is it not right to harp on other cuisines and cultures from an outsider perspective, but it is permissible in this case?
Replace 'How can they EAT that horrible sugary mess' with 'Raw fish in seaweed? How can they EAT that, it's disgusting!'. Saying it is not to your taste, is unappealing to you, etc, is all well and good. Just refrain from the ethnocentrism - it goes both ways - and don't just insist people have "no culture".
Sweet Potato Casserole
2 large or 3 medium cans sweet potatoes, drained & mashed
3/4 stick butter
1/2 tsp cinnamon (...but I usually go crazy with it)
2 eggs, beaten
1 cup sugar or Splenda (...less is fine)
3/4 cup milk
Melt butter, add eggs. Add sugar, milk and cinnamon. Pour over sweet potatoes. Bake uncovered 30 minutes at 350 degrees.
Topping
1 cup cornflakes
1/2 cup sugar or Splenda
1/2 stick butter
Melt butter, crush cornflakes, add and mix. Spread mixture over sweet potatoes and sprinkle with cinnamon. Return to oven for 15 minutes at 350 degrees.
for people who's families are not fighting in the next room and have some time this thanksgiving...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yam_(vegetable)
@maggie i'm so in your camp with this one. but to finish with the mellows you could decamp to a casserole top with the marshmellows then garnish with cinnamon and maybe drizzle with some old vanish corn syrup.
and on the the who the hell and why...
this dish and related frying and potatoing and whatnot is probably southern. Africans brought frying to the states back in the day, along with better uses for the potato. If I remember right. This is like my grandma from texas's recipe. MmmMMMm... :)
"Whatever happened to tradition? Whatever happened to special occasion food?"
Well, clearly it's not a tradition for everyone. I've been to Thanksgiving dinners that were delicious and indulgent sans marshmallows. "Special occasion" doesn't *have* to mean "food that will kill you if you eat more than a spoonful a year." It can just mean something that's too time-consuming to prepare for most days -- like awesome, awesome turkey.
I don't just find marshmallows very appealing, period. I like overindulging for special occasions, I like sweets, but damn, marshmallows -- I never got them at all.
Sugar is just one of those things that a lot of people are sensitive to. I know I'm way more tolerant of extreme savoury flavours than I am of sweet, though yeah, I've never been a fan of seaweed.
That seems to be a lot of brown sugar, but I bet they're candied to gooey perfection.
I prefer to use the same ratio's of butter/sweet potato, but I add only a couple tablespoons of honey instead of so much brown sugar. 1 lb is a lot of sugar.
Oh, come on. You can't see that this is all done in jest? OK, stereotypical generalizations about a specific culture, any culture, is rarely, if ever, fair. My idea of "no culture" is really about ideas around North American culture in general which is dominated by British culture, but watered down. And British culture has long used other cultures for fun: Peter Sellers in The Party anyone? Why is that not blackface?
I guess the British/Anglo-Saxon/English-language domination of the world for the past 300 years has left Brits and Americans moving targets for past grievances. But like the British who protest the immigrants coming in from the former colonies: suck it up. It's your mess. Like someone once said of satire against the Catholic Church: the Church is big, powerful and wealthy. It can take it. Same goes for Anglo-American culture.
I remember on the eve of the Iraq War, there was a great deal of commentary from the neo-cons about a new age of Anglo power dawning, because of the Bush-Blair pact. In the case of Canada, who chose not to be involved with that war, our Prime Minister at the time was French-Canadian, so that apparently said everything that was needed to be said.
And yes, I hear people discuss the oddities of other cultures' foods all the time. Many people are disgusted by the idea of raw fish.
I think those that come from so-called WASP culture or British backgrounds saw this thread for what it is: gentle fun at the idea of certain food choices. My whole point was that in my experience, those particular food choices were of a specific culture. No offense was intended and if I gave offense, I am sorry. And please make fun of Germans or Canadians all you want: I can take it.
This is what you get for insinuating that WASPs, and Canadian WASPs in particular are "folks without an ethnicity". ;)
um this is a dessert recipe, right?
This dish alone is probably 2000 calories. If you manage 3 sweet potatoes cut up in a skillet you are saying that this "side dish" would service 4 people with a quarter of their days caloric intake. What could you possibly do for dessert after that?
What you have there is a really lumpy sweet potato pie. Hold the crust. Hold the custard. I bet it would make a great desert with a small scoop of vanilla ice cream, a sprinkle of cinnamon and some toasted pecans.
Hey, here's an idea: how about you just cook them exactly the same way as regular potatoes... only they already taste better?
Another tip from Canada that you American's may not have heard of: make them into French fries with spicy mayo for dipping. Have you discovered that already? Are you still calling them "freedom fries"? Just checking.
I've never heard of anyone cooking their sweet potatoes with marshmallows, but the recipe described in this post sounds similar to what I've always known as yams or candied yams. My family never made yams quite this sweet, but I have had them this way before elsewhere, and it's tasty.
Also, last comment from me: if you like this dish, all the power to you. I grew up with blood sausage and headcheese and tongue. Boiled cow tongue. So who's to say what's good? My partner, who is Greek, grew up with goat cheeks, brains and eyeballs. Seriously. Her family would get half a goat. It was cheaper than a whole one. But that only left one cheek and one eyeball. Kind of like the turkey-neck dilemma in some families (mine included): who gets to have the neck?
It all makes the world turn around.
And Happy Thanksgiving, American BBers. As they stated on the immortal SCTV: Canadians celebrate Thanksgiving a month before Americans. So we must have invented it.
I grew up eating sweet potatoes with marshmallows at thanksgiving (my aunt would make it just for me- nobody else liked it). Since I'm cooking this year, I'm going to try this - thanks!!
I've never seen a recipe like the one my mom uses (as I do now, as an adult).
Pre-bake your sweet potatoes the day before, and slice them about 1 inch thick. Saute in butter until the edges of the slices have started to brown. Sprinkle a modest handful of brown sugar over the top. Add a healthy jigger or three of brandy and tilt the pan to flambee. Let the flame go out on its own, and serve immediately.
You can use whiskey instead of brandy. This makes a not-too-sweet and delicious dish with a deeper flavor from the brandy, and lovely crispy edges on the potatoes.
@ Janissa11: That sounds amazing! I think flambee with whisky or brandy is woefully underused in cuisine today :D
I also think Maggie's posted recipe sounds pretty good. Maybe it would help to think of it more as a dessert that happens to be served with the main course? A pre-dessert?
Hi!
If someone is taking a poll, I'm in the camp of "They are nicely sweet already." It's a subtle sweet, too, with lots of tastes and textures that don't need sugar smothering if being served as a vegetable, at least in my opinion. But you could serve this as a dessert.
I usually serve sweet potatoes at regular meals and prepare them in the potato cooker in the microwave just the same as regular potatoes (with butter and seasonings at the table.) I don't serve them at Thanksgiving because I serve pumpkin pie. Yes, I do the sugar overload at dessert! I recommend making the pie filling and putting it in a chocolate shell, and serve with a dollop of real whipped cream. Pumpkin and chocolate, YUMmmmm!!!! By the way, you can substitute mashed sweet potatoes for pumpkin in pies, too, but I guess everyone knew that?
Leila
Here in the UK we wonder at the idea of eating something sweet with the Turkey. (But then, we have cranberry sauce -- basically cranberry jelly -- with ours.)
This is too sweet for me. My recipe involves two yams, a quarter cup of sugar, a quarter cup of maple syrup ... and a shot of bourbon. Yum.
Demidan,
"The softer, orange variety is commonly marketed as a "yam" in parts of North America, a practice intended to differentiate it from the firmer, white variety. The sweet potato is very distinct from the actual yam, which is native to Africa and Asia and belong to the monocot family Dioscoreaceae. To prevent confusion, the United States Department of Agriculture requires that sweet potatoes labeled as "yams" also be labeled as "sweet potatoes".[1]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweet_potato
Also Canadian from Southern Ontario.
I would NEVER eat that garbage. Every now and again someone will bring the whole sweet potato and marshmallow garbage to a potluck. I refuse to eat that crap either. Gross. I had someone even try and tell me it was an old family recipe... I am like, do you know how long marshmallows have been around for? Not long.
Anyway my recipe is particular easy.
Step 1) Bake
Step 2) Add butter to taste
However I have had deep friend sweet potato fries with a chipotle/mayo dip which was really tasty. I have also has home fry style sweet potato with a whole bunch of spices like rosemary, paprika, garlic, chili, etc... which was also good.
Anyway at worst I might be a little liberal with the butter.
Ah, SCTV. From a fellow Canadian - much love to the show. And I wasn't particularly offended by your post, mostly was just going for clarification :)
Eat what you enjoy, share with friends and family, and have a great Thanksgiving (to all the American BBers).
I'm surprised at how many people have never heard of cooking this dish with marshmallows.
And Lady Katey, I couldn't have said it better myself.
DartVain @ 44
No need to disparage the marshmallow on account of its age. The modern marshmallow-making process is only 60 years old, but there are marshmallow recipes that go at least back to the early 1800s.
That said, marshmallow-covered candied yams make me think of sugar headaches and burnt tongues. I'm pretty sure I liked them when I was younger, but now I'd trade them in for a nicely baked sweet potato. Or I'd put them in sweet potato pie for desert.
The sweet potato compote mentioned in the original post actually sounds good to me, but I'd rather have it for desert.
Oh no. No, no, no.
I, too, was subjected to candied yams and was afraid of sweet potatoes for the next 20 years. Until a damascene conversion at a friend's house.
The *best* thing to do with them:
Peel, then chop your potatoes into small pieces (a little bigger than a standard die). Toss in a bowl with some salt, pepper, rosemary (fresh or dried) and a little bit of olive oil, then stir around until everything is nicely coated.
Pour out into a single layer on a baking sheet, and bake in a hot oven (like alongside a roast, anywhere from 375-425F). You can turn them over during cooking to get brown on all sides, but it's not important. Let them go for about 20 minutes, until the edges are all browned but they're not too dark.
Slightly crunchy and salty on the outside, soft and sweet on the inside. Best fresh out of the oven (the crunchy outside goes soggy as they cool).
Or... Wrapped in prosciutto!
http://video.nytimes.com/video/playlist/style/the-minimalist/1194811622323/index.html
Ah Bittman.
~
Why would anyone add sugar or something sweet to something that is pretty sweet to begin with? Especially a vegetable!
That kind of thing never made sense to me. North Americans will practically wreck food with sugar.
I've gotten used to more european style baking and cooking. It's great to find out that even in desserts there are other and more subtle flavours.
Happy ThanksGiving from all your friends in Soviet Canuckastan.
Sorry my information comes from my friend European trained Master Chef Angus Cambell his knowledge trumps a Government agency attempting to prevent confusion.
I'm a non-WASP white American and have heard of marshmallows incorporated into sweet potatoes but never been served it myself. It sounds kind of gross. In fact, I only really like marshmallows in s'mores.
Anyway, my favorite sweet potato recipe involves using Southern Comfort instead of water as a liquid. Yummmm.
I'm from the southern part of the US. Candied Yams with marshmallows is a pretty ubiquitous Thanksgiving dish. In my experience this is not the case in the rest of the US. I fully agree that it is too sweet and rich to be eaten on its own or in great quantity. But when you're dealing with a full Thanksgiving meal, one that is laden with salt from the Turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes, and stuffing, it balances out well. And I don't want to hear anything from you Canadians about gluttony. I've eaten your Poutine, an every day dish!, and that thing is about as glutinous as they come...savory delicious gluttony.
Baked sweet potatoes! OM NOM!!
Yep, my fave is also to pick a large one, bake it in the oven, break the crust open and mash the insides with butter, sea salt and a bit of cayenne. Then eat the peel which has sopped up the extra butter and spice *drool*. I don't enjoy sweet stuff much so there is no way I'd go for marshmallows and whatnot. But whatever floats your gravy boat!
Well here in New Zealand we don't put marshmallows or sugar with our sweet potatoes. And we don't call them sweet potatoes - they are kumara, and they come mainly in orange and red/purple varieties. I don't know what you would call them in the US, but the orange ones look like the photo at the top of the post.
A great way to eat kumara is with an orange-juice reduction, yum yum! Kumara are also great just roasted in the oven with no extra bits at all.
Also, we have trifles like the English. No Cool Whip in this country. As huge dairy producers it's all the real thing. And we only have one type of cream that's used for everything - pouring, whipping etc. Also we don't put "cream" in coffee, we use milk.
We are actually quite different from both American and English food cultures.
Rest assured that proper poutine is most certainly not an "everyday" dish. It may be *available* every day, but nobody sane eats it that way.
Poutine is hardly an every-day food. At least west of Quebec. Can't remember the last time I've seen someone eating it around here (s. Ontario).
lady katey @ 32
I remember fluff! It used to sit right next to my grandmother's other two whipped-cream salads: "ambrosia" (creamy fruit salad with marshmallows) and "glorified rice" (kind of like cold rice pudding, mixed with pineapple and lime jello. Thanks for the lovely, sugary memories!
apoxia@63
The potatoes in the picture look a lot like what we'd call "Beauregards".
Over here in NZ, we call them kumara. Never heard of anyone cooking them with marshmallows or sugar. That's overkill. Try mashing them with a bit of grated ginger mixed in (not powdered ginger). Ditch the turkey and replace with rack of lamb. Add a thin minted jus from the pan, Serve with buttered carrots. Now that's tasty!
Yo- this is boingboing not some epicurean fetishist site- here's how it's done- we're going to slather our yams in home distilled veg oil, strap them to the car battery and REALLY cook those suckers then serve with melted peeps
seriously, that much sugar.. hmm, now i am wondering if all i read about americans diets is true.. I don't really follow recipes, but rather see cooking as a form of personal chemistry, & if i was making sweet potatos (or yams) i'd..
1) chop the potato into chunks & nuke in the microwave for a few mins, just to soften them up.
2) glaze with honey, salt, pepper & maybee sprinkle with any herbs i got growing @ the time.
3) put in a hot oven, occasionally turning, until skins are crunchy.
that's it! some other great recipes here that i think i'm gonna try next time i cook s.potato.
As I understand it, the NZ sweet potato - kumara - kicks the American sweet potato's ass.
That is all.
I'll leave the debate re: whether it's okay to serve desserts as side dishes or if sugar counts as a cultural ingedient to the rest of you.
...and this is why we don't have American cooking programs in Australia.
It is just amazing how far the US palate has diverged from its colonial origins.
I can watch Iron chef, see them make a fish liver sushimi, and think "well thats not to my taste", but on the rare occassion I'm confonted with an American recipe, late at night on a cable food channel, I just sit there with my jaw on the ground like I'm watching a car crash.
It's weird, because I've eaten some great, fabulous food in the US, but whenever you publish recipes I fell like pointing a TASER at the cook and screaming "STEP AWAY FROM THE PINEAPPLE AND LOWER THE FROSTING GUN. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, YOU ARE PREPARING A SAVOURY DISH!"
Hey! Good News!
We don't all. I think it looks revolting too. I've never put sugar on sweet potato.
Boingers are such an intolerable bunch of snobs and know it alls. Sugary sweet potatoes are delicious. Also savory ones. I like marshmallows though I know they aren't for everyone. But how can someone who uses a whole pound of sugar say drop th marshmallows?
BTW, Brits and Canucks are not allowed to lecture anyone about cuisine.
mitch is right: why not enjoy the sweet potato on its own merits.. just simply roasted, peel and enjoy its flavor and loads of natural sweetness...... simple preperation is best. just bake them in the oven for an hour.
I think they sound marvelous! Normally I do sweet potatos in the oven like normal bakers, but for a treat, these sound amazing!
They're certainly called Sweet Potatoes in Australia. No matter what your master chef friend calls them.
Different regions have different names for plenty of vegetables. They're called Kumara in Polynesia and New Zealand.
What Americans, Canadians and Brits call Peppers are called Capsicum in Australia and many other parts of the world and Paprika in others.
What is shown in that photo at the top is certainly not a Yam to any Aussie, Kiwi, Brit, etc.
My grandma has a long and proud tradition of bringing marshmallow salad (mini marshmallows, canned pineapple bits and orange segments, maraschino cherries, and sliced bananas, all lovingly tossed in a thick coating of Cool Whip), as well as her marshmallow sweet potatoes.
Except, her sweet potatoes are delicious, marshmallows or not:
Sliced the potatoes about a half-inch thick and layer them with slices of apple, and sprinkle some brown sugar and cinnamon in there as you go. To die for, I tell you.
Several comments here. First, the picture shows two different kinds. The red ones on the bottom look to be Beauregard, I don't know about the brown ones . My favorite has white flesh and pale brown skin, called Nancy Hall. I am like Mitch. Just bake it and eat it. Add nothing. My favorite comfort food. Eat the peel also. I read some place the sweet potato saved the South from starvation during the civil war.
I didn't make it through the entire comments, but here is my favorite way to cook them.
1) cut into large "cottage fries" size
2) coat generously with some nice olive oil
3) cover w plastic and microwave on high until nearly soft
4) fry on a skillet w brown sugar until browned (not blackened)
5) salt and serve with a nice extra-garlic ailoli
Enjoy!
Here in South Africa we call them patats, and we either just cut them up in chunks and roast them, with some olive oil basil and rosemary, or we mash them with some butter and sugar(not nearly as much as the recipe in this article, maybe two table spoons) and then cook it in a open sauce pan. Makes a wonderfully sticky substance that's great for piling mountains of rice an other fine types of food onto once it on your fork...
To my family, trifle means a layered dish of cake soaked in liquid, fruit, custard and jelly (which I gather Americans call Jello).
I invented a nice trifle a few years ago: take a slightly stale rich chocolate cake, soak in equal parts apricot nectar and mead liqueur (replace with orange liqueur if you can't find mead liqueur; omit the alcohol altogether if serving to children). Top with apricots or peaches, custard, and raspberry jelly. (For culinary brownie points, you can make the raspberry jelly out of raspberry coulis and the setting agent of your choice, but I just use Aeroplane Jelly and it turns out fine.) Apricots, peaches and raspberries are all in season around Christmas time here in Australia, so this is a standard Christmas dessert in my family.
Regarding sweet potatoes, I like to cut 'em up and bung 'em around a roasting chook along with the regular potatoes, and they're also nice diced up in soups. They are fantastic with a bit of spice on them (cumin, garlic, coriander and all the usual curry suspects). I wouldn't like them sugared, but it's not like anyone's leaping across the Pacific to force me to eat 'em that way, so if that's how your culture suggests you eat 'em, more power to you.
Carrots, now... I routinely candy those in butter and brown sugar for special occasions.
This is basically peanut brittle with sweet potatoes instead of peanuts. Of course it's delicious. It's candy.
To add to the survey...
I'm a native midwesterner, and I never heard of marshmallows on sweet potatoes until I was an adult. We put butter and brown sugar on them, but not marshmallows.
I've seen it a lot in the last couple of decades though. Maybe it's not as "traditional" (generations-old) as we think? Could the combo be traced back to a Ladies Home Journal recipe from the 1960s, or something like that?
Jeez, calm down people. Everyone likes different foods. I'm ok, you're ok. Deep breaths.
now i am wondering if all i read about americans diets is true..
Dude, this is not something people eat every day.
Also, yes, calm the eff down and just let people eat whatever they want.
Gloria #26, WASP is "White Anglo-Saxon Protestant" - it's probably primarily a North American term, but it's those of us whose ancestors mostly came from the British Isles and aren't Celtic or French, though maybe Viking is ok. It's what used to be called "the majority culture" or "normal" or "those boring white-bread folks". My sister lives in Hawaii, and when her kid had a "bring an ethnic dish to school" day, she made little raspberry tarts from one of my mom's cookbooks, which we'd grown up with as an occasional treat. Over there, that was exotic food :-)
Most of the really hideous American food I've had is from the Midwest, using heavily processed packaged ingredients that originated in the mid-20th-century. Things with green Jello or marshmallows or Kool Whip in them. Or "savory" dishes with nothing spicier than a bit of black pepper or maybe oregano, "chili" with canned kidney beans and canned tomatoes and no interesting flavor. Much of it's as likely to be Scandinavian-American origin as opposed to Anglo-Saxon.
My mother's a reasonably adventurous cook who grew up in the MidWest and raised us in a part of the East Coast where ethnic food was mostly limited to Italian, occasionally Greek, and occasionally Chinese-American or Pennsylvania Dutch. We didn't have a Taco Bell until I was out of college, and Mexican food arrived a few years after that.
I grew up with sweet potatoes served in the mashed baked casserole with marshmallows on top and lots of brown sugar and cinnamon, and being the kinds of kids who'd grown up eating Capn Crunch cereal for breakfast, the real point of the dish was the marshmallows, not the underlying sweet potatoes. My wife grew up other places and made simple baked sweet potatoes, served with butter and salt&pepper, which was a real revelation. Occasionally I'll put cinnamon on them, but normally just eat them straight. (And I'm a vegetarian these days, so only my wife and one of the cats eat marshmallows.)
Sounds appropriately southern and deliciously decadent! My sister in law did something very similar, but also had brown sugar glazed pecans on top. Heaven!
My family always does the marshmallow thing - ON THANKSGIVING. Mashed, and then the marshmallows on top and heated in the oven. But it's specifically part of the Thanksgiving meal, for us; we don't make mashed sweet potatoes normally at all, let alone with tons of sugar. And yes, the marshmallows or some variant of 'candied yams' is pretty traditional on a lot of Thanksgiving tables.
Normally we eat em baked, or sliced into discs and sauteed in a pan in olive oil or something along those lines - maybe a *little* brown sugar, but nothing like this. More likely salt and pepper. And I agree, sweet potato fries are amazing.
Billstewart @ #88: Look into Sweet & Sara's marshmallows (Whole Foods IRL, Pangea or Vegan Essentials online) and/or, if you can get them locally (Whole Foods would be most likely), Chicago Soy Dairy's "Dandies."