Sweet Potato Casserole…

I hope everyone had a great thanksgiving.  I slaved in the kitchen all day to finish with a great meal.  My Texas Longhorns lost, ending a terribly disappointing season, but hopefully the food would brighten my night up.  And it did, tremendously.  I smoked and roasted a turkey, made gravy from that, a sweet potato casserole, cooked some kale, and made a pumpkin pie from scratch.  The next few posts will sum up each thing I made.  For today, it’s the casserole.

Sweet potato or yam; what’s the difference? Well, even though we use the terms interchangeably, they are different things.  Sweet potatoes are the tan skinned potatoes with yellowish (or purple for Okinawan) flesh.  The red skinned, orange fleshed potatoes are also sweet potatoes.  So what the hell is a yam? It’s bark-colored skin looks rather unappetizing, and the flesh is white or reddish, depending on variety.  Apparently, they are not as common in US stores.  You may be able to find real yams in a Latin grocery store. So, I bought the dark skinned Garnet yams, which are technically sweet potatoes.  That’ll confuse you for the holidays.

There are many recipes for this online.  You’ll see many say to boil, steam, roast, whatever the potatoes.  PLEASE roast them!!! You don’t get the caramelized, sweet flavor from boiled potatoes.  Place them in the oven and roast until soft in the middle.  It took a while for me because I bought sweet potatoes on steroids.  They were bigger than my arm in some cases.

After you roast them, the preparation is really easy.  Just mix, top with nut streusel, then bake.  It leaves you a lot of time to stress about every other menu item!

Sweet Potato Casserole

4 cups sweet potato, mashed
1/4 c white sugar
2 eggs, beaten
1/2 t salt
4 T butter, melted
1/2 cup evaporated milk
1 t vanilla extract

topping:
2 t cinnamon
1/2 c brown sugar
2/3 c flour
6 T butter, softened
1 c chopped pecans
1/2 t ground cloves
1/2 t ground nutmeg

Place sweet potatoes on rack in 375F oven for 1 1/2 hours.  If your potatoes are skinner, you may be done at 1 hour. Take them out to rest for a few minutes, then peel the skin off.

Lower oven to 325F. In a large bowl, mix potatoes, sugar, eggs, salt, butter, milk, and vanilla. Mix well until smooth. Pour in a 9 x 13 baking dish (I prefer glass).

In a smaller bowl, mix the brown sugar, cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon, and flour.  Add the butter and mix with fingers or fork until mixture is crumbly and coarse.  Mix in pecans and sprinkle over the potato mixture.  Bake 30 minutes or until topping is browned.