First of all, what the hell is a Yam? And why do people insist on putting marshmallows on things? And why would anyone eat any of this stuff when there are mashed potatoes available? And why do people ask you to bring the mashed potatoes when everyone knows you can’t reheat them and have them taste right?
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BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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The greatest food abomination, IMO, is the pairing of marshmallows with sweet potatoes. Just peel and quarter them, toss them with a teeny bit of maple syrup and olive oil, maybe some orange zest and roast them til they’re carmelized….natural and unadulterated.
That sounds many orders of magnitude better than the freakish abomination I read about yesterday.
Amen! They’re also great mashed, with a hint of garlic!
BooMan – they’re full of vitamins and antioxidants – other potatoes can’t compare in terms of nutritional value.
But we all know people serve them for the color, more than anything. Harvest colors and all that….
Roast with olive oil, rosemary and oregano. Serve with carmelized onions.
nonono….sweeten condensed milk, an egg and brown sugar and pecans baked in oven!!
….and lots of butter!
That’s a sweet potato pie without the crust. 😉
You have obviously never made potato pancakes out of leftover mashed potatoes! They are delicious.
that’s different. I put mashed potatoes on my turkey sandwiches, but that doesn’t mean I want to eat mashed potatoes with my Thanksgiving Day dinner that have been trucked in from out of state.
Ah, I see. I misunderstood.
It doesn’t take that long to make mashed potatoes. Why not just bring what you need and make them there? Too many cooks in the kitchen?
yeah, or not enough room on the stove.
They have to be reheated, rewhipped and probably add a bit more yogurt/sour cream, then they are OK.
Sweet Potatoes? A little bit of Jim Beam in the mix always hits the spot, but I agree with the above poster, less is more.
And sweet potato pancakes from the leftovers are yummy.
I’ve noticed corporate recipes lately that use Jack Daniels or Jim Beam. Very odd. Good marketing, though.
Adding sour cream to the mashed potatoes ensures they can reheated and come out wonderful. We are headed to Alabama for Thanksgiving and we have prepared the mashed potatoes, potatoe salad (it is to die for), pumpkin, sweet potatoe and apple pies, cornbread dressing, and greens (a family tradition) and we have never had a problem of reheating the food at our destination. Guess we enjoy cooking and have learned some “secrets” that ensures that dinner comes out fine. We will be carrying the smoker to cook the turkey so, it works out fine for us.
Also with a little cream cheese.
A yam is one of several varieties of usually rather large (up to 150 lbs.)root vegetable originally domesticated in Southeast Asia and West Africa and also cultivated in the islan Pacific. Unless you are shopping at an ethnic grocer, you are unlikely to find one in this country. What your local megamart sells as a yam is in fact a sweet potato (a Central American domesticant) relabeled by the Louisiana sweet potato growers. Your food trivia for today is that the word “batata”, from which the English word “potato comes, originally refered only to sweet potatoes.
But sweet potatoes with marshmallows melted on top are sooo good. And if the mashed potatoes are real, not out of a box, they actually reheat pretty well.
this is the sweet potato recipe l usually use: in addition to the sp’s, add 2 apples, cored and sliced, about 1/2 cup of chopped pecans, 1/2 cup of brown sugar, 1/2-1 tsp of cinnamon, and a bit of maple syrup.
takes about 45 – 60 min baking time at altitude @ 350º
note: quantities may vary. it’s pretty much ad lib.
raisins and whisky optional depending on tastes.
Who prefers orange sweet potatoes and who prefers white sweet potatoes?
Most people I talk to don’t even know there is a white one. I much prefer it to the orange.
Not sure, but it seems like the white ones might be more a regional thing. All my old eastern Kentucky relatives always grew white ones. But here in Ohio, orange seems to reign.
Anyone else eat the white ones beside me? The local grocery always has just enough on hand to satisfy me and not many more than that.
White sweet potatoes are good, but the only time I had them was visiting friends in Maryland. I like the orange ones just steamed and smashed with a fork on the plate, add butter, salt & pepper. I cheat these days and use a couple packages of Idahoan mashed potatoes at Thanksgiving – miss the lumps of homemade, but under all that gravy can’t taste any difference.
The only way I have found to maintain the quality of the mashed potatoes is to put the potato pot containing the finished mashed potatoes into a larger pot which has hot water in it. Keep the potato pot covered and everything on the stove on a low heat. this is much like caterers do with things in buffet lines where they have the lit sterno can under a steam pan to keep the water hot. You want no direct heat on the potatoes. The hot water bath will maintain the temperature and the potatoes will keep at a high quality for a long time. If you try and keep finished potatoes warm on a direct heat you will end up with a disastrous result, regardless of how good the potatoes were when they were made.
My spouse and I were wondering the same damned thing about yams and sweet potatoes — what’s the difference. Well, it turns out that sweet potatoes actually have more vitamins in them than yams do, even though they are basically the same otherwise. We were surprised too. Just think of them as health food.
For all of those folks who recommended putting Jim Beam or Jack Daniels into mashed sweet potatoes, all I can say is “Thanks” for the suggestion. I suspect almost any decent aged bourbon would do too, especially since the labeling controls on bourbon whiskey are among the strictest in the world. Use an Evan Williams or Ezra Brooks in the mashed potatoes and keep the other stuff for sipping while cooking.
sweet potatoes are awesome. I love them. Put some fresh lime juice in with mashed sweet potatoes for a non-sweet variation. Definitely no marshmallows.
but for thanksgiving or any dinner where there’s gravy, you need mashed white potatoes.
A yam is not a sweet potato.
A yam is this montrous (I’m referring to size, not to moral fiber) South American vegetable..
The best way to eat sweet potatoes is in sweet potato pie, followed by sweet potato biscuits. The canonical garnish for sweet potato pie is plum preserves.
Once you eat a sweet potato pie, pumpkin will never darken your kitchen again.
Au contraire pilgrim!
Try double boiling them slowly, adding a little cream and / or milk and butter.
Cream cheese and / or a little sour cream won’t do the slow-double-boil reheated version any harm.