Holiday Twice-Baked Sweet Potatoes

It feels like a good day to talk about sweet potatoes.  Not difficult to grow, full of useful nutrients, plays nice in sweet or savory recipes (we’ll talk about the magic of black beans with sweet potato and cheese and maybe a little cumin and cooked onion and a tortilla later, promise) and you can grow them for their edible leaves and stems if your soil conditions are not great for big fleshy roots.  I have heard that you can grow them to eat indoors if near a bright window, but everything above the soil is toxic to dogs/cats/horses so don’t let furballs snack on them. This year I bought sweet potatoes from the store, but last year I grew a bunch in a big flowerpot outside to keep them safe from gophers.  I gave the vines some trellis to grow up on and watered them, well, probably still not quite enough but they survived ok.  I left them in the pot until it got cold enough for the leaves to wilt and then die back, then gave the roots a week or two on the counter until I could get to cooking them.  I don’t have any pictures of the dish, from this year or any other, so here are some pictures of the plants.  When I was growing up this sweet potato recipe was my favorite of the holiday dishes, and probably the only one mom didn’t tweak a little or replace every year.  So, Dear Reader, check below the pictures and give this recipe a try.  I hope you like it.

HOLIDAY TWICE-BAKED SWEET POTATOES 

• 3 large sweet potatoes or yams (I use jewel yams or garnet yams, anything with orange flesh)
• 2 Tbsp butter
• ½ C Milk
• ½ tsp salt
• 2 egg yolks, beaten
• 2 egg whites, stiffly beaten
• ½ tsp cinnamon
• ½ tsp nutmeg

Wash (scrub the dirt off but try not to break the skin), dry, and oil the skins of the potatoes.

Bake the potatoes about 1hr at 400⁰ or until tender, don't break the skin

Cool until easy to handle, don't break the skin

Slice the cooked potatoes in half lengthwise, don't break the skin (notice a pattern?)

Scoop out the soft cooked sweet potatoes and set aside the skins to refill later.

Mix the cooked sweet potatoes with the butter, milk, salt, spices, and egg yolks.

Beat 1 min, or until very smooth.

Fold the stiffly beaten egg whites into the mixture.

Refill the potato shells with the potato mixutre. Place these filled shells in an oiled dish, I use a large casserole dish

Bake 10 min at 450⁰ or until hot through.  You can overcook these for a while before they get dry or weird so err on the side of overcooked if you aren't sure, you want the egg to be fully cooked

This dish could be prepared early in the day or even the day before, everything up through the refilling of the shells. Then, shortly before time to serve, bake the dish. If it has been refrigerated for awhile, it may take more than 10 min to get hot.

Enjoy :)  And know that if you are eating these right now, I wish I was joining you :)