I love sweet potatoes. They’re colorful, delicious, and full of good things like vitamins and antioxidants. A baked sweet potato is perfect all on its own. They’re a regular feature on Thanksgiving tables where, unfortunately, their natural sweetness is often obliterated by brown sugar, corn syrup, and honey, and (sometimes) marshmallows.
It’s not Thanksgiving yet, but musing on a Thanksgiving sweet potato recipe is never a bad thing in my book. The point is, you want to enhance the flavor and natural sweetness of sweet potatoes without adding another sweet element.
I often roast chunks of sweet potatoes with olive oil and earthy spices, such as cumin, coriander, and maybe a touch of cinnamon. Here, I toss them with piney rosemary needles and chili crisp, a Chinese condiment of red chilies, Sichuan peppercorns, and often garlic, shallots, soybeans or peanuts, cooked together in oil. The sweet potatoes are then spread out on a sheet pan and roasted until tender and lightly browned. They have an irresistible spicy, herby kick, and you can’t eat just one. About those sweet potatoes: Please don’t call them yams.
Yams they are not. Yams are a tropical tuber related to lilies and grasses, and hardly ever seen in these parts. Sweet potatoes are also not potatoes. They are a tuber in the morning glory family. They grow much like potatoes do, underground, on the roots of a vine that itself is edible.
They also come in different types and colors, including Stokes Purple (purple all the way through), Hannah (tanskinned with white flesh that’s drier, flakier, and less intensely sweet), and the purple-skinned Japanese sweet potato, which has nutty, yellow-hued flesh. The sweet potatoes we’re using here are the typical, orange-fleshed sweet potatoes, often a Beauregard or a Jewel, but generally not labeled in the store. This dish is even more gorgeous if you use the intensely hued Garnet sweet potato.
You can peel the sweet potatoes, but if the skins are clean and relatively thin, you don’t have to. If you do peel, note that sweet potatoes may get dark streaks after peeling so best to get all the ingredients for the recipe prepped and then peel the sweet potatoes. Chili crisp varies in heat, so taste it first and see how much you and your palate prefer. We loved this dish with simple grilled chicken thighs, but it could certainly accompany a Thanksgiving turkey.
FALL PRODUCE
VEGETABLES
Beets • Bok Choy • Broccoli • Brussels sprouts • Cabbage • Carrots • Cauliflower • Celeriac • Celery • Collards • Corn Cucumber • Eggplant • Fennel • Garlic • Kale • Kohlrabi • Leeks • Lettuce • Mushrooms • Onions • Peppers • Potatoes • Pumpkins • Radishes • Rutabaga • Squash (winter) • Tomatoes • Turnips
FRUITS
Apples • Grapes • Pears • Strawberries (late) • Watermelon
HERBS
Rosemary • Sage • Tarragon • Thyme
