Mashed sweet potatoes (or yams, if you call them that) with butter, brown sugar, and holiday spices. A perfect side dish recipe for Thanksgiving!
Mashed sweet potatoes or garnet yams are always found on our holiday or Thanksgiving table. Most of the time we make a double or triple recipe because everyone wants the leftovers! We usually just bake them, scoop out the insides and mash them with a little butter and brown sugar.
Here’s the thing about sweet potatoes, they pair beautifully with oranges and holiday spices like cinnamon and nutmeg.
My father first came up with this idea in an old issue of Bon Appetit. The recipe includes grated orange zest, lemon juice, and the spices you would typically find in hot mulled wine. We reduced the sugar from the original recipe and added some salt and pepper.
The spices give the yams a wonderfully festive holiday accent!
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The difference between sweet potatoes and yams
Sweet potatoes and yams are not the same root vegetable and are not interchangeable in recipes. True yams are not often found in US supermarkets, but sweet potatoes are plentiful.
Why do we call sweet potatoes yams?
Sometime in the 1930s, sweet potato growers in Louisiana began marketing their sweet potatoes as yams to differentiate them from other sweet potatoes. Growers probably chose the name because the two bulbs were already confused. Yams are an important food in Africa, and slave traders used yams as food for their captives. Enslaved Africans called them yams because they resembled the food they knew. People exchanged the terms for centuries before growers marketed yams as yams.
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More classic Thanksgiving side dishes
- Perfect mashed potatoes
- cranberry sauce
- Roasted Parsnips
- Classic glazed carrots
- Green bean casserole from scratch
From the editors of Simply Recipes
Spiced mashed sweet potatoes
You can easily make this recipe a day or two in advance and reheat right before serving.
If you don’t have a fresh orange for the zest, you can stir in some orange juice instead.
ingredients
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3 to 4 lb red-fleshed sweet potatoes (sweet potatoes)
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1/4 cup (packaged) Brown sugar
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4 tablespoon butter
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1 tablespoon lemon juice
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2 teaspoon Orange peel
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3/4 teaspoon Cinammon
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3/4 teaspoon ground allspice
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3/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
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1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
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Fresh ground black pepper
method
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Preheat the oven:
Preheat oven to 400°F.
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Bake the sweet potatoes:
Prick the sweet potatoes all over with the tines of a fork (this should help release the pressure while the potato cooks).
Place the potatoes on a foil-lined roasting pan or thick, rimmed baking sheet. Bake until sweet potatoes are completely tender, about 50 minutes to an hour or more. Remove from the oven and let rest until cool enough to touch.
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Remove the cooked sweet potato flesh from the skins:
Slice the sweet potatoes lengthways and place the insides in a large bowl.
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Mix with brown sugar, butter, lemon juice, orange zest, spices:
Stir in brown sugar, butter, lemon juice, orange zest, cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg, and salt.
Using an electric mixer (or by hand with strong arms), beat the sweet potatoes until completely smooth.
Sprinkle with some ground black pepper to taste. Then try! (But don’t eat them all, although you may be tempted.)
| nutritional information (per serving) | |
|---|---|
| 280 | calories |
| 6g | Fat |
| 53g | carbohydrates |
| 5g | protein |
