This is the “correct” way to eat the orange tubers 
. I like the traditional thanksgiving dish well enough but the sweet tater fries as Ulfrieda describes are best.
I saw them mashed in combination with regular white potatoes on this show the other day. Stefano was making a Thanksgiving-themed Cottage Pie with ground turkey.
You can buy white flesh and purple flesh ones here at Publix. I grew both orange and purple outside/purple flesh ones myself this year - the purple ones got much larger than the orange ones but aren’t quite as sweet and are firmer.
Edit to add:
True yams are something totally different, but some of the most popular true yams are purple too such as the winged yam.
That, or baked. I refuse to eat candied sweet potatoes, for the same reason. They are already loaded with their own sugar.
I’ve always had my sweet potato casserole done with those little marshmallows. I served it last night, and several of my guests said they had never heard of it before.
I grew up in South Florida. My guest was from the midwest, I believe. Is it a regionalism, or just dumb luck based on family patterns?
I love the Korean purple sweet potatoes. Trader Joe’s has them sometimes. They have a chestnutty taste and I like the texture. I eat them with salt or salt and a little good olive oil.
I grew up on the Oregon coast, as did my mother and her father. My father had been born and raised in California. The marshmallow version with the canned “yams” was standard in our family for Thanksgiving.
My family made sweet potato with orange slices. No marshmallows, though I knew of this variant from television.
I’m in Michigan, born and raised, and I remember seeing marshmallow-covered abominations in casserole dishes at family gatherings as a kid. Maybe it’s a generational thing as opposed to regional.
Could be. I spent my childhood in both midwest and East coast locations, and those mini-marshmallow topped candied yams were everywhere. My son, on the other hand, has never had them, because my tastes, and those of many of my peers, have moved toward less sweet, less processed dishes.
That seems possible. Those guests are about 20 years younger than I am.
Use colored marshmallows. Problem solved!
For white sweet potatoes, top with circus peanuts!
This has to be the first time I’ve ever seen an use for those as an actual food item.
I always hated that traditional yam/sweet potato casserole, so for the longest time I thought I was a sweet potato hater. But I’m not! As others have said, roasted in a smidge of olive oil and some salt – delicious!
My mothers family used to serve candied sweet potatoes, but Mom hated them and refused to make them for us. It’s served on lots of tables in the Midwest. I dislike the dish, but I love sweet potato fries with a sprinkle of chili seasoning and salt. Or baked sweet potatoes; those are yum!
I like plain roasted yams (put in the oven until done, then peel and eat) but I’m not sure I’ve ever had sweet potatoes. Our orange Thanksgiving vegetables are pumpkin (pie and bread) and butternut squash (sliced with a sour apple, dotted with some butter maybe a few cranberries, and a little brown sugar, and nuked).
If you want a sweet, sweet potato side that isn’t a marshmallow abomination this (stolen from the above post);
sweet potatoes, sour apples, dotted with some butter, and a little brown sugar. Nuked or baked 'til everything is soft.
is great. Really good with a nice, fatty, pork roast (fresh or ‘green’ ham).
And used to be available (almost ready to go, everything needed to be cut up a little) in the freezer section.
In my house we almost always eat sweet potatoes as fries with horseradish sauce (globs of prepared horseradish mixed into mayonnaise).
I grew up with marshmallow casserole for thanksgiving. Sure, I liked it as a kid, but it is one of a small list of dishes I grew up with that will not grace my Thanksgiving table (the other being green bean casserole).
Never encountered a white sweet potato myself. How did they go over?
Not bad. The recipe I found made a LOT of casserole. I had a large rectangular pan full. Someone else had also brought a sweet potato casserole-- theirs was standard issue orange, in a square pan exactly half the size of mine. Don’t know if signals got crossed or if they wanted a backup casserole in case I screwed up. All of theirs and half of mine (so the same quantity as theirs) were eaten.
As is so often the case on the SDMB, a simple question thread I started has turned into a very interesting fount of info and stories about sweet potatoes. This thread has gotten me rethinking my dislike of sweet potatoes-- I may try a savory treatment, and roast or fry some wedges. They’re very good for you, right? I believe the orange variety means carotene and the purple is probably full of flavonoids and anti-oxidants, like blueberries are.