Sweet potatoes are as rampant as the kudzu vine all over the South.
—Betty Fussell, I Hear America Cooking
Certain foods are of such significance to my identity that I am bound and determined to pass on a love for them to my son. He will love field peas; he will love cornbread; he will love okra and chicken and dumplings and boiled peanuts; and he will love sweet potatoes. These foods are not just important to me; they are me. In serving my son these foods, I am passing on a love for them that is greater than a love of the way they taste. In the wise words of New Orleans’s passionate cooking teacher and culinary historian Poppy Tooker, we have to “eat it to save it.” We are not only saving such foods but also passing on our cultural identity to the next generation in the process. And is there any food more central to our southern identity than sweet potatoes?
The sweet potato was of such importance in the pastoral Piney Woods of Mississippi in 1840 that a traveler noted that it was the only crop cultivated in this region of poor white cattle and hog grazers. It was so versatile and dependable that it was the only crop needed. It was reported that the traveler “ate sweet potatoes with wild turkeys and various other meats, had a potato pie for dessert and roasted potatoes offered to him as a side dish, drank sweet potato coffee and sweet potato home brew, had his horse fed on sweet potatoes and sweet potato vines, and when he retired he slept on a mattress stuffed with sweet potato vines and dreamed he was a sweet potato someone was digging up.”
A life so dependent on one crop may be difficult to fathom, but not much has changed in my hometown of Vardaman, Mississippi, in the nearly 175 years since that time. It is a place where the sweet potato is not just a southern food but the center of a whole network of ties to community, economics, and identity. The annual Sweet Potato Festival, held on the first Saturday in November, culminates a weeklong celebration of the annual harvest with sweet potato–cooking contests, tasting booths offering everything from sweet potato sausage balls to sweet potato bonbons, and, in true southern fashion, a Sweet Potato Queen.
As the daughter and sister of sweet potato farmers in the self-proclaimed Sweet Potato Capital of the United States, I consider sweet potatoes a mainstay of my family dinner table. In addition to sustenance, they have provided their share of life lessons. By the time I was a teenager, I had worked at pulling slips, the shoots that densely bedded “seed” sweet potatoes send up, and had spent a couple of summers riding the “setter” that plants those sweet potato slips in expansive fields. I learned firsthand how eyes and ears and noses fill with dust from the warm, just-plowed earth and how the modern farmer’s schedule is set by nature and financial demands, often at odds with each other. By then I knew, too, of the sweet potato’s versatility in the kitchen and that, after a few early failures in pursuit of the “Little Miss Sweet Potato Queen” title , I was more apt to win my sweet potato accolades there than on the pageant stage.
It is a southern tradition to have a story for everything, and the sweet potato delivers a fascinating one. All southerners—rich or poor, black or white—owe no less than their lives to it. During and after the Civil War, sweet potatoes are said to have saved both rich and poor from starvation. Without a doubt, they also provided long-term nutrition to the region’s poorest residents, both black and white.
In the story of the sweet potato, we find the themes of loss and redemption that run through much of southern culture. Once such a prominent food in the southern diet, the sweet potato is now eaten by many only on Thanksgiving in the form of sweet potato casserole or sweet potato pie. There was a time in recent history that it would have been embarrassing to admit to enjoying sweet potatoes (and many other lowly foodstuffs such as ramps, grits, collard greens, and chitlins) in educated and middle-class circles. Luckily, times are changing. There is an increasing awareness and valuing of traditional, local foods and a rejection of homogeneity and globalization. A rising tradition of southern chefs starting with the late Edna Lewis and Bill Neal celebrates these seemingly pedestrian southern foods. Food writer John T. Edge sees these themes as part of a larger consciousness of the value of community, which results in “knitting back together the tethers of community by way of food.”
George Washington Carver said that sweet potatoes were one of “the greatest gifts God has ever given us” and claimed they had the potential to replenish soils ravaged by King Cotton. Might it finally be time to take heed of this wisdom?
The sweet potato was grown in the southeastern United States long before the first Europeans arrived. De Soto found sweet potatoes being cultivated by Native Americans in Louisiana and as far north as Georgia in 1540. By 1648, the Virginia colonists were growing them. The Native American provenance of sweet potatoes is reflected in an early recipe resembling sweet potato spoonbread that appears in The Carolina Housewife under its Indian name, Espetanga Corn Bread.
Archaeological evidence suggests that the sweet potato was domesticated in the Americas at least as far back as 2000 B.C. and possibly as early as 8000 B.C. The latter possibility would make sweet potatoes the earliest major crop planted anywhere in the world. The first known European discovery of sweet potatoes was when Columbus found them growing in Haiti in 1492 and transported them back to Spain, thus making them one of the earliest New World foods adopted in Europe. They were called by their Arawak name batata, or in Spanish, patata, and eventually, in English, “potato.”
Before we can further explore the sweet potato’s history, we must first attempt to define what a sweet potato is and clarify what it is not.
The history of the sweet potato is as tangled as a mass of its twining, trailing vines in late summer. Despite all of the confusion, the sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas) is related to neither the russet potato (Solanum tuberosa) nor the true African yam (Dioscorea). The sweet potato is a member of the morning glory family, and if you have ever laid eyes on the plant, you have seen the similarities. The only food plant in this family, it is actually a swollen storage root and a storehouse of nutrients. The ordinary russet potato, however, is technically not a root but a subterranean tuber, but it is also of New World origin. The true African yam is a large, hairy tuber of tropical origins related to neither the russet potato nor the sweet potato, and it has only recently been imported to the United States and sold in African specialty markets.
The centuries of gastronomic and botanical confusion between the yam and the sweet potato began with the slave trade. Ships transporting enslaved Africans to America were provisioned with true yams. In America, there were no yams, so they were replaced with sweet potatoes, a New World crop common in “Indian gardens.” Slaves even took to calling them by the West African word nyami, which was Anglicized to “yam.”
The confusion was further compounded in the 1930s when the USDA allowed Louisiana to brand the moist, bright orange Puerto Rican variety of sweet potato as a yam, however incorrect that designation may be. By capitalizing on its traditional name, Louisiana hoped to distinguish its sweet potato from the then prevalent paler, drier varieties grown in Virginia, Maryland, and New Jersey. Fast-forward to today when those varieties are grown nationwide, and there is anarchy in the produce department.
The linguistic imbroglio involving the sweet potato and the russet potato occurred when the Spanish encountered Solanum tuberosa in South America in 1529, nearly forty years after discovering the sweet potato. They called russet potatoes batatas as well because they reminded them of sweet potatoes, which they had already come to love.
If I have learned one thing as I have researched the history of the sweet potato, it is how often the authors themselves have been befuddled. The Oxford English Dictionary states that in his 1597 book, Herball, John Gerard called white potatoes “Virginia Potatoes” and later “Bastard Potatoes.” In Food, Waverly Root asserts that Gerard must have been speaking of sweet potatoes for russet potatoes did not exist in Virginia, or anywhere in North America, at this time.
Flip through any historical southern cookbook like The Carolina Housewife or The Virginia House-wife, and I challenge you to determine which “potato” the author is referencing. You will find recipes for “white potatoes” that call for them to be baked in a sweet pudding seasoned with cinnamon.
In The Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink, John F. Mariani tells us that the term “sweet potato” was not used at all in America until the 1740s. It was needed to distinguish sweet potatoes from common white potatoes, which were making increasing claims upon the word “potato” after being introduced by Irish immigrants in Boston around 1719. It is known that Solanum tuberosum did not become widely accepted until it received Thomas Jefferson’s seal of approval in 1802, when he served “potatoes in the French manner,” that is, French fries, to White House guests.
In the South in 1930, the sweet potato had yet to relinquish its title to Solanum tuberosum, according to Blanch S. Rhett in Two Hundred Years of Charleston Cooking. “If you ask for potatoes in the South you get sweet potatoes. When you want the white tuber of the North you must ask for Irish potatoes,” she wrote. In my own experience, older generations of southerners to this day refer to white potatoes as Irish potatoes, or in the local dialect, “Arsh taters.” And the word “potatoes,” or “taters,” is used to refer to either white potatoes or sweet potatoes.
Confusion extends to popular culture as well. In his 1949 hit, Little Jimmy Dickens laments the common predicament of his generation, who as whining, hungry children were told to “take an old cold tater and wait.” Dickens is a native of the Appalachian Mountains, the one southern region where Solarum tuberosa is of greater significance historically than the sweet potato due to its cooler climate. However, he did not pen the song. The song was written by E. M. Bartlett, who was born in Missouri in 1885 and raised in Arkansas at a time when sweet potatoes would have been much more common both in fields and on tables. Perhaps even more telling, though, is the fact that the song was never meant to be a country song but was written for the comedic jazz quartets of the 1920s. These earliest jazz recordings tended to portray black musicians in a less-than-flattering light. To understand African American history is to understand that the “tater” here surely must have been a sweet potato.
In Seaboard Slave States, Frederick Law Olmsted suggests that slaves ate a more balanced, healthier diet than most whites, including planters. Despite their meager rations, there is shockingly little evidence of nutritional diseases among slaves. This is likely due to the consumption of the sweet potatoes and greens that slaves grew themselves. Sweet potatoes were preserved through the winter by mounding them in hills and covering them with straw and soil to protect them from frost. The potatoes became sweet and tasty in these curing mounds or “tater hills.” Slaves’ self-provisioning was often encouraged by their masters not only because it was cost-effective but also because it was discovered that “Negroes fed on three-quarters of a pound of bread and bacon are more prone to disease than if with less meat but with vegetables.”
Sweet potatoes took longer to mature, so they were less important to the pioneer than faster-growing crops. However, they were of primary importance to the settled farmer. After sweet potatoes were planted in late spring, hungry children were scratching them out of the ground and eating them raw by midsummer. The sweet potatoes continued to grow and multiply all summer until the main harvest just before frost. Sweet potatoes produced a good yield even in poor, sandy soils, making them a boon for the poorest farmers. In addition, sweet potatoes provided food for livestock, who were fattened before the slaughter with the produce gathered by gleaning the fields after harvest.
By the mid-nineteenth century, southern planters no longer considered sweet potatoes the food of slaves. The Carolina Housewife, The Virginia House-wife, and The Kentucky Housewife all include numerous recipes featuring sweet potatoes. On a tobacco plantation in Petersburg, Virginia, in the mid-nineteenth century, Frederick Law Olmsted reported, “There was … but one vegetable served—sweet potato, roasted in ashes, and this, I thought was the best sweet potato, also, I had ever eaten.” This food was no doubt placed on the big-house table by the hands of African slaves.
On the eve of the Civil War, the diet of black and white southerners had become homogeneous. Sweet potatoes were listed as one of the most requested foods by both black and poor white southern troops. The sweet potato was invaluable to every class of southerner during wartime. Its underground habit made it less susceptible to deliberate destruction than other crops such as corn or field peas, and it was often the last defense against starvation. It has been said that southerners brought starvation on themselves when they abandoned growing corn and sweet potatoes for a cotton monoculture. This greatly increased southerners’ dependence on imported food. When the Civil War began, many agricultural leaders in the South asked farmers to show their support for the Confederacy by replacing cotton with edible crops. Arkansas and Georgia went so far as to pass laws aimed at diversifying agriculture and restricting the cultivation of King Cotton, but by and large these efforts failed. Confederate soldiers were said to have gone days at a time without food, and as a result, they became excellent foragers and scavengers, often feasting on farmers’ sweet potato lots that they discovered. They were particularly crazy for anything green, and sweet potato greens were highly prized.
Fifty years later, the pre-industrial South was thick with the aroma of sweet potatoes cooking in woodstoves. Fieldworkers, children, and hunters carried sweet potatoes in their pockets or aprons for a midday meal.
The sweet potato has remained emblematic of African American foodways in the centuries since slavery, and it has served as inspiration for black artists. Novelist Richard Wright claims the first sentence he ever penned while writing his famed autobiography was “The soft melting hunk of butter trickled in gold down the stringy grooves of the split yam.”
The sweet potato became a symbol of the freedom obtained through embracing one’s cultural identity in Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. The protagonist is overcome with homesickness and memories of shame after an encounter with an old black man selling roasted sweet potatoes out of a cart on the cold streets of Harlem in the 1940s. He remembers, “At home we’d bake them in the hot coals of the fireplace, had carried them cold to school for lunch, munched them secretly, squeezing the sweet pulp from the soft peel as we hid from the teacher behind the largest book, the World’s Geography.”
As he eats his sweet potato with relish and then goes back for seconds and thirds, he reaffirms his identity, his blackness, and his southern roots by embracing his love for the sweet potato. He declares, “I yam what I am!”
Beyond their common association with soul food, sweet potatoes were actually referenced in its conception. Amiri Baraka, formerly LeRoi Jones, is considered by many to have first used the term “soul food” in Home: Social Essays in 1966. In an essay on soul food published as a rebuttal to critics claiming that African Americans had no language or characteristic cuisine, Baraka wrote, “No characteristic food? Oh, man, come on. … Sweet potato pies, a good friend of mine asked me recently, ‘Do they taste anything like pumpkin?’ Negative. They taste more like memory.”
In spite of its history and the nostalgia it inspires, the sweet potato has slowly lost its prominent position in the diet of southerners. The per capita consumption of sweet potatoes in the United States was thirty-one pounds in 1920; by 2000 it had dipped below four pounds. Worldwide statistics show that as a population becomes less impoverished and stops growing its own food, the consumption of sweet potatoes decreases.
There are many explanations for this trend. Modern diets offer more variety and competition, and certainly class plays a role in determining what people eat—and do not eat. Class preferences probably explain why the sweet potato dishes that remain popular are the overly rich ones. My grandfather eventually refused to eat simply baked sweet potatoes, but he relished pies and marshmallow-topped casseroles. After years of eating several baked or raw sweet potatoes a day on a Mississippi family farm, he had had his fill.
This only tells part of the story, however. Today, most of the sweet potatoes grown and consumed in North America are still cultivated in the Southeast, especially in North Carolina, Mississippi, and Louisiana. The sweet potato patch has given way to large sweet potato fields, and the potato hill has been replaced with modern sweet potato storage houses. The decline in sweet potato consumption corresponds with the rise of industrialized agriculture and mechanization, for which the sweet potato is poorly suited. Whereas the russet potato is machine planted and dug, the sweet potato is easily bruised and cannot withstand the rough handling of machine digging and sorting. Thus, the sweet potato industry relies heavily on labor. In the rural areas where sweet potatoes are grown, this seasonal labor can be difficult to find. As a result, skilled migrant labor is essential to the industry. The process of contracting with the U.S. government for migrant labor is difficult and cumbersome and is currently under threat of stricter immigration laws.
The sweet potato is what you eat when you grow your own food. But in the market, the substantial labor involved translates into the higher cost of sweet potatoes. Even more important, the higher cost of production means that there is less desire to turn the sweet potato into a processed or value-added food. In Asia, sweet potatoes are processed into flour and starch and made into noodles of exceptional quality. Japan turns sweet potatoes into the prized liquor known as Shochu. George Washington Carver developed 107 different sweet potato products, yet nearly 100 years later, virtually none of these products have made it out of Carver’s lab.
In recent years, the per capita consumption of sweet potatoes has bounced back, up from 3.8 pounds in 2000 to 5.3 pounds in 2011. The reason for the rise in popularity has been the increasing recognition of the sweet potato’s health benefits, including its being named the most nutritious vegetable in an extensive study by the Center for Science in the Public Interest in 1992.
The sweet potato is a source of complex carbohydrates, high fiber, vitamins C and B6, calcium, protein, and iron. It is high in beta-carotene (an immunity-boosting nutrient and precursor to vitamin A), which is fat-soluble. That means in order to get the maximum vitamin absorption from your sweet potato, you’ll need some fat. Hallelujah! Whether you adorn your baked sweet potato with a pat of butter or pan-fry sweet potatoes in a little bacon grease, you can do so guilt-free!
You do not have to look far to find nutritionists singing the sweet potato’s praises. In recent years, the sweet potato has become the darling of health columnists from coast to coast, a testament to the root’s growing popularity outside of the South. Even carb-a-phobes relish the sweet potato as a “smart carb” due to its low glycemic index, or its neutral effect on blood sugar. Burger King, White Castle, and other national chains have added sweet potato fries and tots to their menus in recent years to meet the demand for healthier fast food. This market represents the biggest increase in sweet potato consumption.
Some research even suggests that the skin of the sweet potato can be used to produce a dietary supplement to control blood-glucose levels in diabetics. The Japanese have long used the skin of a white variety of sweet potato for this purpose, but recent research shows that the more common orange-skinned variety is just as effective.
Recently, the sweet potato has been viewed as an ideal crop for ending world hunger and disease due to its high nutritive value and ease of growth even in poor soils. It has steadily been replacing the true yam in Africa because it is considered a cure for childhood blindness associated with vitamin A deficiency.
Beyond its promise as a food crop, the sweet potato is currently being re-engineered by North Carolina State University scientists as a source of ethanol for the biofuel industry.
Running counter to the trend of industrialization is a growing niche market for the sweet potato: the demand since the mid-1990s for heirlooms, or traditional, old-timey varieties. Heirlooms are less than ideal for commercial markets, in which sizes are graded, misshapen potatoes are culled, and high yields, appearance, and toleration of storage are everything. However, their superior flavor and storied histories make them prized by farmers’ market shoppers and chefs alike.
In the farm-to-table local food movement, sweet potatoes are constants on restaurant menus and are being used creatively in countless artisan products from vodka to hot sauce. In North Carolina, Fullsteam Brewery makes a small-batch sweet potato lager named Carver, in honor of the great southern environmental scientist and sweet potato advocate, George Washington Carver. At Mississippi State University, students are reviving Carver’s research endeavors in competition for a $2,500 cash prize for a new value-added product that would make use of Mississippi sweet potato seconds and culls.
There are literally hundreds of varieties of sweet potatoes with a myriad of colors, textures, and tastes. The best way to explore them is to buy a couple of every variety you find, bake them slowly, and decide for yourself which ones you like. It is impossible to list them all, but here’s a sampling of the varieties and types available in American markets.
Orange-fleshed “traditionals” This is what most people think of as a sweet potato—moist, orange-fleshed, and sweet. Regardless of how they are marketed, none of them are yams. There are subtle differences, most of them superficial or solely of concern to producers. All of these varieties are delicious. Greater variation results from growing and storage conditions than from variety. The most common commercial varieties are Beauregard, Covington, Jewel, and Garnet.
Sweet, moist whites and yellows The absence of beta-carotene means these varieties lack the characteristic carrot or pumpkin flavor of the orange sweet potato. Many heirlooms fall into this category, and I describe a few—Hayman and Nancy Hall—below. The only commercially grown white sweet potato found with any regularity in the South is the O’Henry. It is a white mutation of the Beauregard and was developed by Wayne Bailey of Cane Creek Farms in Vardaman, Mississippi. I am always proud to tell North Carolina farmers they are growing a Mississippi sweet potato! It can be used in any recipe that calls for an orange-fleshed variety, and it has similar sweetness and texture to the “traditionals.”
Heirlooms An heirloom variety is simply a variety that has been passed down through generations. A huge amount of variation exists among heirlooms, and this is just a sampling of the ones I admire for their flavor and/or their story.
* Hayman It is said that this heirloom from Virginia’s Eastern Shore is so delicious that the Devil would not have offered it to Eve; he would have eaten it himself. It is super sweet, pale inside and out, small, ugly, and prized by locals.
* Nancy Hall Out of the dozens of sweet potatoes she collects, conservation gardener Yanna Fishman nominated the Nancy Hall to Slow Food’s Ark of Taste. It is an old-time North Carolina favorite with waxy, honey-flavored yellow flesh.
* Violetta A super sweet white-fleshed sweet potato with a pretty violet-purple skin. Excellent, very sweet flavor and one of the most beautiful sweet potatoes to behold. A true sweet potato queen.
* Mahon or Bradshaw In a tasting of twelve varieties, this was my favorite. Light orange flesh with notes of butterscotch and brown sugar. The Mahon, unfortunately, was recently patented. The Bradshaw is a variety of the Mahon developed by a retired horticulture professor from Clemson, David Bradshaw.
Oriental or Japanese A few distinct types of Asian sweet potatoes are found in American markets. Japanese sweet potatoes have deep rosy skins that contrast beautifully with their ivory flesh. Their skins get wonderfully crisp when roasted, and their flavor is closer to that of chestnuts than the traditional orange sweet potato. There are also several purple-fleshed and -skinned varieties new to American markets. Most bear resemblance to the famous Okinawan purple sweet potatoes. All Purple is a traditional Japanese variety that lives up to its name—it is purple inside and out. A newly patented variety from North Carolina with a big marketing push in recent years is the Stokes Purple. Both are mildly sweet and have dry, mealy textures that can be bewildering to the uninitiated. The purple flesh reacts with baking powder in baking and turns an unappetizing gray. Ideal for savory applications, they crisp up beautifully due to their lower moisture content. The skin can be bitter, so you may wish to peel them.
Buy sweet potatoes dirty by the bushel directly from a farmer if you can get them. They will be cheaper and keep much longer. Do not buy “fresh dug” or uncured sweet potatoes because the quality is inferior. Sweet potatoes should be cured in a warm, humid environment for a few weeks, a process that converts the starches to sugars, before they are sold. The harvest season is the end of summer, generally September and into October. They are cured and in their prime just in time for Thanksgiving. When stored properly, sweet potatoes will keep without deteriorating for up to a year. Size is generally not a determination of quality, though I have found that jumbo sweet potatoes have a tendency to be fibrous or “stringy.” For best storage, choose sweet potatoes without any soft spots.
Unwashed sweet potatoes can keep for months in a cool, dark spot where the temperature does not dip below 55°. Once washed, sweet potatoes do not last more than a couple of weeks at room temperature. They should be stored in a well-ventilated area, such as a basket. Do not store them in the refrigerator, which creates hard white spots in the flesh and deteriorates the flavor and texture.
The most important thing to know about cooking sweet potatoes is that they should be cooked until they are completely soft in the center. Please, no al dente sweet potatoes! I regard the following methods as the most essential techniques for preparing sweet potatoes.
Mashing Many recipes in this collection call for mashed sweet potatoes or sweet potato purée. Start by baking or steaming the sweet potatoes, which produces the most flavorful mash and superior results in the recipes; I detail those methods below. Coarsely mash the warm, peeled sweet potatoes with a fork or potato masher or purée them in a food processor for a smoother texture. If your sweet potatoes seem particularly fibrous, you can pass them through a food mill or a fine-meshed sieve to remove the strings.
Steaming Steamed sweet potatoes have a luxurious, silky texture. Peeled and sliced or diced sweet potatoes steam quickly and hold their shape well. They can also be steamed whole, with or without the skins. Steam in a tightly covered pot on a rack over boiling water until completely tender when pierced with a sharp knife, 10–15 minutes for diced or 30–45 minutes for whole sweet potatoes. Steamed sweet potatoes are a mainstay in my refrigerator and are the basis for my favorite everyday breakfast. In a large cast-iron skillet, heat 1 tablespoon olive oil and a pinch of smoked paprika. Fry slices of steamed sweet potatoes for a few minutes on each side and top with a fried egg cooked in the same skillet.
Baking Slow-baked sweet potatoes have a rich, caramelized flavor. Wash the sweet potatoes well, then prick them all over with a fork. Place on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper or foil in a cold oven and bake at 350° until the flesh has collapsed away from the skins and the sugars have begun to seep, bubble, and burn on the baking sheet. The sweet potatoes will be completely soft when done, 1–1 1/2 hours depending on the size. The skins will slip off easily while the sweet potatoes are still warm.
Frying Sweet potatoes can be fried as chips or French fries, but they need to be fried at a lower temperature than russet potatoes to avoid scorching. Soak thin slices or fries in ice water for an hour. Drain and pat completely dry. Deep-fry in small batches at 325° for 2 minutes for chips and 3 minutes for fries. Drain on brown paper bags. Raise the oil temperature to 350° and fry again until golden brown. Drain again on paper bags and salt generously.
Boiling Generally, I prefer to steam sweet potatoes instead of boiling them except in cases where the cooking water as well as the sweet potatoes will be utilized. You can, however, boil sweet potatoes whole with the skin on without the loss of flavor and nutrients. Place well-scrubbed sweet potatoes in the bottom of a heavy saucepan, cover with cold water, and add 1 teaspoon salt per pound of sweet potatoes. Cook until easily pierced with a sharp knife. Drain and cool slightly before slipping off the skins.
Microwaving Microwaving is one of the fastest ways to prepare sweet potatoes, but the results are inferior, lacking in sweetness and creaminess. Microwaving is, however, valuable as a time-saving partial cooking technique. Wash the sweet potatoes well, prick them all over with a fork, and microwave on high for 4–7 minutes, or until they give just slightly when squeezed with your fingertips. When cool enough to handle, cut into desired shapes and proceed with roasting, frying, sautéing, or grilling to finish. The cooking time will be cut in half. Try adding par-microwaved sweet potatoes to your favorite kebobs. They absorb marinades particularly well.
Raw Sweet potatoes can be eaten raw. Cut into thin slices or batons and soak briefly in ice water for extra crunch. Serve with your favorite dip. They can also be grated raw in salads. Rinse to wash away the excess starch. Approach with caution: eating raw sweet potatoes can cause intestinal distress in some individuals. This fact has garnered them the nickname “poot-roots” from old-timers like my grandfather who ate countless raw sweet potatoes as a child while working in the fields.
* 1 medium sweet potato = 1/2 pound = approximately 1 cup mashed or chopped sweet potatoes
* To prevent cut sweet potatoes from turning brown, use a stainless steel knife (as opposed to carbon steel) and submerge them in cold water. This can be done days in advance of further preparation. Drain and blot dry with a clean towel before proceeding with your recipe.
* Bake more sweet potatoes than you need, then peel and freeze the extras in 2-cup portions to have on hand for recipes.
* Sweet potatoes are a beautiful addition to the home garden. My favorite source for slips is Southern Exposure Seed Exchange (www.southernexposure.com).
* In a sunny kitchen window, place a sweet potato in a quart jar of water and watch it grow. It will frame your window in beautiful vines in a couple of months, and the leaves are edible.
Limiting my selection of recipes to the fifty in this book was a challenge indeed—there are so many sweet potato possibilities. The recipes I have chosen are some of my favorite ways to showcase the sweet potato, and I hope you will try them all! When the variety is unspecified, the recipe was tested with traditional sweet and moist orange-fleshed sweet potatoes. Some recipes were developed for specific varieties, such as the chestnut-like, white-fleshed Japanese or O’Henry, and call for them by name.
The endless versatility of the sweet potato inspires creativity and a personal approach, and I have aimed to offer techniques to help you build your own repertoire. Regarding technique, perhaps the century-old Picayune Creole Cook Book says it best: preparing “the sweet potato is an art, for the delicate flavor of the potato is lost if it is not properly cooked.” May you all be sweet potato artists!