I can’t face another Thanksgiving with marshmallows considered to be part of a vegetable side dish. I intend to volunteer to do the sweet potatoes for this year’s feast to help my mother-in-law and to save myself from the gawd-awfulness of the traditional casserole.
One year, I tried a recipe that had pineapple in it - it wasn’t nearly as good as I’d hoped. I don’t want to do baked sweet potatoes - I loved 'em, but I know this family, so it’s got to be some sort of casserole.
Do you have a good recipe you’re willing to share?
I don’t have a fixed recipe but I prefer Sweet Potato Pie to most other forms of the root. Basic ingredients are Sweet Potatoes, milk, sugar, eggs, and miraculously the right amount of cinnamon makes it taste like Pumpkin pie.
Peel and cut into nice-sized chunks (whatever your definition of “nice-sized” may be). Put in a roasting pan. Drizzle with olive oil. Sprinkle with curry powder to taste. Stir to distribute oil and curry powder.
Roast at 375 degrees till fork-tender (30-40 minutes for the size chunks I consider “nice”).
Yams without marshmallows? Y’all ain’t from 'round hear, are ya?
Why limit yourself to sweet potatoes? Here’s how I like 'em. Cut up a buncha carrots, spuds, sweet potatoes, bell peppers, & onions. Add a buncha peeled garlic cloves. Toss 'em into a sheet pan, mix with generous portion of olive oil, season with salt (ideally large-grained sea salt), pepper, and herbs of provence (or whatever you like). Bake at 425 for about 40 minutes, flipping them a couple times, till they’re good & browned or even a bit blackened. Yum. Of course, omit or substitute vegetables as you see fit.
Yup. I also do like them cooked and eaten just like a regular baked potato, too: baked, smashed, buttered, sour creamed, salted, and eaten, skin and all.
I start with that with some salt, nutmeg, and cumin too. But I keep it fairly lightly seasoned at this stage, leaving the kick for the topping. Like where I could eat that straight and it would be ok, but no “wow”.
Mash that all together, put it into a casserole dish, and top with some dabs of butter.
I mix the topping in a little bowl so it’s well-blended and I can adjust by smell and tiny tastes: brown sugar (about 2-3 tbsp for a 9-in casserole), salt, pepper, cinnamon, cumin, ginger, garlic powder, cayenne. Maybe some cloves or lemon/orange zest or whatever else you like. I play around with it.
Sprinkle it evenly over the sweet potatoes and put it back in the oven so the topping can caramelize.
The number trick is to buy the right damn sweet potato. Too many are tasteless, IMO, and I think that’s what has led to the adulteration of sweet potatoes with all the sugar.
Buy Red Garnet Yams. That’s all you need to know. From there, just bake 'em until they’re all soft. Doesn’t even really matter what temperature, they’ll take longer at 325 than they will at 400, but either way, they’ll get there.
Once they’re cooked, all they need is a bit of butter and salt. They are sweet and tasty enough that nothing else is needed.
Kenny Rodgers (the restaurant chain not the singer) used to make this great sweet potato side dish. It was a mashed sweet potato base with a crumbler-like spice cake topping.
Peel, halve and slice as many as you need, about half an inch thick. Place in a baking dish and pour in enough orange juice to come about half-way up the dish. Bake at 350 until orange juice is absorbed and potatoes are just starting to brown. Salt to taste. You can also season it with pepper, cumin, paprika, etc. Or not.
This is my go-to recipe for sweet potatoes. I hated them for years because my family, even when covering them in syrup and marshmallows, made chalky sweet potatoes. These are wonderful.
Whisk 1/4 cup maple syrup, 2 tablespoons melted unsalted butter, 1 diced chipotle pepper in adobo sauce, 1 teaspoon adobo sauce, and 2 teaspoons minced fresh thyme leaves together in small bowl.
Toss potatoes, peeled and cut into 3/4" rounds, in large bowl with oil, salt, and pepper to taste until evenly coated. Line 18- by 13-inch heavy-duty rimmed baking sheet with aluminum foil and coat with nonstick cooking spray. Arrange potatoes in single layer on baking sheet and cover tightly with aluminum foil. Adjust oven rack to middle position and place potatoes in cold oven. Turn oven to 425 degrees and cook potatoes 30 minutes.
Remove baking sheet from oven and carefully remove top layer of foil. Return potatoes to oven and cook until bottom edges of potatoes are golden brown, 15 to 25 minutes.
Remove baking sheet from oven and, brush potatoes with half of glaze, flip slices over with thin metal spatula, and brush with remaining glaze. Continue to roast until bottom edges of potatoes are golden brown, 18 to 22 minutes longer. Remove from oven; let potatoes cool 5 to 10 minutes; transfer to platter and serve.
Sometimes I will simply cut them into wedges and roast them. Good, but not as good as the above.
I don’t know if this will fly for your family, but my favorite is to boil some sweet potatoes along with some red potatoes. While they’re cooking,make bacon, then carmalize some onions in the bacon grease. Throw in chopped garlic and jalapeños when the onions are almost done. Mash the potatoes with butter and cheddar cheese, add the onions, etc. Top with chopped bacon.
The thing is, while curried sweet potatoes are delicious, nobody wants your damn curried sweet potatoes on Thanksgiving. (Trust me, I learned this the hard way). They want their damn sweet potatoes with marshmallows. If they’re not going to eat baked sweet potatoes, they do not want innovation.
That said, one possibility that might work is sweet potatoes with orange juice, brown sugar, and candied pecans. It avoids marshmallows, but otherwise is a sickly sweet dessert passing as a vegetable dish, and moreover pulls in some very Thanksgivingy flavors. I think I’ve had it before, and if I have, it’s delicious.
I agree with this. While I’ve never had marshmallowed sweet potatoes on Thanksgiving anywhere ever (thankfully) if it’s established tradition where you’re at don’t mess with it. Provide the marshmallowed sweet potatoes. If you want to do an alternate version of the dish, you may do so, but provide what is expected. If the new dish goes over well, and the old tradition goes by the wayside over the next couple years, so be it, but part of the charm of Thanksgiving is keeping up traditions and expectations (in my opinion.)
We usually cut them in half, and put them in the roasting pan with the, in my mother’s case, turkey, in mine, tofurky. But if you want a side dish with sweet potatoes that is really sweet and dessert-like, but also vegetarian (vegan, as a matter of fact), you can make something called tsimmes. Cube some sweet potatoes or yams, and cut some peeled carrots (taste them to make sure they are sweet), and boil them until they are soft.
Drain the water, and then add margarine, honey, a pinch of salt, raisins, and prunes. Cut the prunes in half. You can leave them out if you know people who just can’t stand the idea of prunes, or you can call them plums, and it’s not really a lie, especially if you buy prunes that are labeled “dried plums,” which a lot of them are these days.
Let it simmer (“tsimmes” is Yiddish for “simmer”) on a really low temperature for about 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Sorry I can’t give you measurements, because I don’t use them. But 2 large sweet potatoes & 3 carrots would be right for a stick of margarine, and enough honey to give it the consistency of a glaze, which is less than you’d think. You want to taste the sweet potatoes, not the honey.
Use a fork to vent the sweet potatoes. Slather in butter or margarine. Wrap in aluminum foil and bake in the oven until they’re done. Serve one potato to each person. Split the potato open, chop up the inside a little, add butter, and eat.
The end.
(Personally, I prefer the white sweet potatoes. They’re not as sweet as the orange ones.)
I know this side of the family won’t eat baked sweet potatoes, and I, for at least one, don’t like curry, altho I’d do chunks with some other seasonings. In fact, I might do that for supper tomorrow. I lurves me some sweet potatoes!
I did find a recipe for mashed sweet potatoes with a streusal-like topping that includes pecans. It’s definitely a pecan-loving family, so I’m thinking that might be a winner. Regardless, I won’t do marshmallows, apart from my personal dislike, because one BIL is a diabetic in denial and I’m not going to contribute to his many and varied health issues. I refuse to do that to his wife. He’ll get quite enough sweet stuff anyway…
Everyone ruins sweet potatoes. They glop marshmallows on them or cook them to grainy mush, or both. The best two ways to prepare sweet potatoes are sweet potato pie and candied sweet potatoes. Pie recipes are a dime a dozen, so:
Candied Sweet Potatoes (~12 servings)
6 sweet potatoes
1/2 cup butter
2 cups white sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
2 tablespoons vanilla extract
dash of salt, to taste
Cut the sweet potatoes into thick slices.
Mix the sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg.
Melt the butter in a skillet. Heat it until it stops frothing.
Add the sliced sweet potatoes.
Cover with the sugar and spice mixture. (Optionally, add vanilla at this point. Some prefer to wait until the end.)
Stir thoroughly.
Reduce heat to medium or low.
Simmer for ~45 minutes to an hour, stirring regularly to prevent sticking. You need to cook nearly all the water out–the slices should be a bit caramelized and crispy around the edges, and the sauce should be dark when it’s done.
Add vanilla (if you didn’t earlier) and give everything a final stir. (I add an extra tablespoon at this point, just because I like vanilla.)
You may be tempted to add water. Don’t–at best, it just slows things down, and at worst, it makes a mushy sweet soup-like mess. You want firm potatoes with crisp edges and a thick glaze.
Also, try this before the day to get the hang of it–it’s easy to let the sweet potatoes stick and burn.