Sweet potato mash

Canadian Thanksgiving is less than two weeks away and my mouth is already watering for that turkey.  I’ll give you my stuffing recipe and how to know when your turkey is done.  I’ll give you my secret for rolling out pie dough without ending up with a bunch of crumpled little fragments, a headache and tears.  But today I’m going to give you my sweet potato mash recipe.  Well it’s not really a recipe, because I’m not going to give you measurements.  That would be pointless as everybody is going to have different amounts of people to cook for.  But I’m going to tell you how I make it. What I love about this dish is that you can prepare it the day before, stick it in the fridge and then pop it in the oven when you take the turkey out and begin making the gravy.  My husband and boys love this dish.  I like it, but to be honest, I prefer just a plain old baked sweet potato or yam with lots of butter, a couple shakes of salt and a spoonful of light brown sugar.  Maybe it’s because it’s what I grew up with. 

Sweet potato mash

Ingredients: yams or sweet potatoes, brown sugar, salt, butter, rum, cinnamon, miniature marshmallows.

I call this sweet potato mash, but actually, around three-quarters of the time I use yams.  It got the “sweet potato mash” name because the first time I made it, the yams were looking a little beat up and tired, so I bought sweet potatoes instead, and so when I made this up, the name stuck.  Also, when you are shopping at the store, if they have organic yams or sweet potatoes get them, they are so much better for you than the ones full of pesticides, and are tastier too.  Don’t pick out the biggest honkers you can find, because I find that although they look impressive, they can sometimes be sort of stringy and fibrous inside, whereas the smaller ones can be more tender. 

-Wash the yams/sweet potatoes thoroughly to get all the dirt off.  Then quarter them and plop them into a large pot of water, skins and all.  I feel the skins adds texture and interest to the mash.
-Boil until soft.  You should be able to poke a fork into it with ease.
-Strain water out. 
-Mash with salted butter (for four regular sized yams I would use around 1/4 to 1/3 a cup)
-Add a glug or two of rum
-Add light brown sugar, salt and cinnamon to taste.

Always start slow when you are seasoning.  You can always add more, but once you’ve added it, you can’t take it back out!  You want to make sure that the sweet of the sugar is balanced out with the savory of the butter, salt, and the bite of the rum. 
When you have it just the way your tongue wants it, dump the concoction into a baking pan.  Sprinkle the top with miniature marshmallows, make sure the marshmallows are evenly spread out so they cover the whole surface.  Then stick directly in the oven.  Temperature doesn’t really matter, thank god.  Because I don’t know about you, but on Thanksgiving my oven is always stuffed full.  And some recipes are very finicky about what temperature they have to be cooked at.  Not my sweet potato mash.  It’s nice and adaptable.  So you can bake it at anywhere from 300 degrees to 425.  Cook until hot all the way through and the marshmallows are a puffy golden brown.  If you want to prepare this the day before, then delete the popping-in-the-oven part.  Instead cover and stick in the fridge to be cooked tomorrow.

Posted by Meg Tilly on Tuesday, September 25, 2007 in Recipes