9 Recipes That Are Sweet Potato Perfection

[Music] hello this is chef john from food wishes.com with loaded twice baked sweet potatoes that's right i've loaded potatoes before and i've twice baked potatoes before but i don't believe i've ever loaded and twice baked a potato and if i have it certainly wasn't with a sweet potato but boy am i glad i did and since we're heading straight into the season where we're looking for spectacular side dishes i think the timing is perfect for sharing this easy and beautiful recipe so with that let's go ahead and get started with hopefully four uniformly sized sweet potatoes and when i say uniform i'm not talking about length it's all about the girth so when we're picking these out we want to find ones that are about the same size around the middle and what we'll do after those are placed on a baking sheet is perform the old poke oil and roast which means we're going to first prick the skin with a knife so they don't explode which is extremely unlikely to happen but i still enjoy saying it and once prick will go ahead and drizzle on some olive oil and then give them a little massage since i like my sweet potatoes like i like my bodybuilders well greased and glistening and then what we'll do once those are evenly spaced is transfer those into the center of a 400 degree oven for about 35 minutes or so or until completely tender and what we'll do while we're waiting for those to roast is move on to the filling which is going to start by adding some sliced up bacon to this pan set over medium heat and of course bacon is the only mandatory ingredient in a loaded baked potato and what we'll do is cook that stirring until it just starts to crisp up and as you may have heard me mention before one great visual clue is that bacon fat is going to start to look foamy and that means most of the fat is rendered out and it's getting crispy alright you see that and as soon as our bacon looks a little something like this we'll go ahead and add a handful of sliced green onions also known as scallions as well as some diced jalapeno pepper and what we'll do is stir that in and only cook it for one minute and the reason we only need a minute is because those peppers and onions are going to continue to cook in that hot bacon fat and by the time this sits and cools down those are going to be perfectly cooked so what we'll do after one minute is simply turn off the heat and reserve those until needed and by the time we've sliced and cooked those ingredients theoretically our potatoes are done and we'll go ahead and pull those out of the oven and of course test those with a knife and since we're going to mash this we really do want to make sure they're tender so give them the old polka poka and make sure and at this point what we'll do is let these cool down a little bit before cutting off the tops and scooping out the flesh and ideally you do this when they're warm and easy to handle and not still dangerously hot like mine were but either way we're going to take a knife and cut off the top third of the potato angling our knife about 45 degrees and we'll go all the way around and then pop off the top and i should mention any sweet potato is going to work for this but i really like the orange flesh the best since i believe it's the most beautiful and the most nutritious and try to be careful not to cut off more than a third from the top all right since that's going to provide for a larger shell to fill and these are going to be easier to handle and work with and then once we have all those tops taken off the next step of course is going to be to scoop all that tender flesh into a bowl all right from the tops and the shells and one tip here is not to scoop out too much from the bottoms all right i try to leave at least a quarter inch of flesh inside which is going to give these a little bit of structure so they don't collapse when we bake them and then what we'll do once all that's been scooped into a bowl is season it up with some kosher salt some freshly ground black pepper and of course a little bit of our old friend cayenne pepper and then besides that we're also going to toss in a handful of sharp white cheddar as well as a nice big spoon of creme fraiche or a spoon of sour cream or even a splash of regular cream and then we're going to finish up by squeezing in the juice of half a lime and then once all that's in there we'll take a potato masher and we'll mash this up nice and smooth before we add our onion bacon and pepper mixture all right we don't want that stuff to get all smashed up so what we'll do is mash this first and then we'll use a slotted spoon to transfer that stuff in at which point we'll give that one last mix and that's it once mixed that filling is ready to stuff back into our sweet potatoes oh and i should mention if you're not into spicy things you could if you want to do this with sweet peppers instead i mean you are after all the beto of your sweet potato so if you elected not to use the jalapeno that'd be fine but personally i think the heat from the jalapeno pairs perfectly with this starchy sweetness here but either way we'll go ahead and mix that up and fill our shells and once we have that transferred in and we've done any final fine tuning we'll finish these off by scattering a little extra cheese over the top all right not too much right we don't want complete coverage because sometimes we'll take that first bite with a fork and all the cheese comes off in one giant piece so instead let's just do a nice scattering and that's it once cheese we'll go ahead and pop those into the center of a 400 degree oven for about 20 to 25 minutes or until they're heated through and the tops have started to brown and they look absolutely awesome and hopefully something very similar to this check it out i mean if those don't look like something you'd want to eat i don't know what does and at this point those are ready to transfer onto our plates or in my case onto a platter so i could take some pictures and then once i had those plated up i attempted to do one of the most difficult maneuvers in all of the culinary arts and that's to get small round bouncy sliced green onions to stay on top of a rounded slick cheesy surface but eventually i got it done and finally my loaded twice baked sweet potatoes were officially ready to enjoy and as fantastic as these looked the taste and texture was even better okay one of my main complaints with sweet potatoes is that they're too sweet and not savory enough but here because of that smoky meaty bacon and bittersweet heat from the peppers and acidity from the lime and sharpness from our cheddar we've really pushed this flavor profile much further down to the savory end of the scale all right to be honest i almost forgot i was eating a sweet potato which because they're so sweet can really be sort of a one note experience but not here we have so many notes and all of them good but anyway that's it what we're calling loaded twice baked sweet potatoes above and beyond the great taste and appearance these are also very versatile since they're just as effective as a spectacular side dish for your holiday turkey as they are served as a meal place next to a simple salad on any random weeknight which is why i really do hope you give these a try soon so head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts of more info as usual and as always enjoy candied yams that's right and of course by candied yams i mean candied sweet potatoes since believe it or not you can't actually buy real yams at the grocery store it's true people that sell such things figured out a long time ago that if you call orange flesh sweet potatoes yams they actually sell a lot faster but anyway that's not really going to affect this recipe at all and i only passed it along in case that no doll foodie relative of yours shows up and points at these and says hey you know those aren't yams right and then you'll be like yeah everybody knows that so anyway technically incorrect names aside let's go ahead and get started and what i have here is about three pounds of sweet potatoes that we're going to call yams for the rest of the video and what we'll do before we start peeling and cutting these is get our water ready and all that means is add a couple quarts of cold fresh water to a pot and stir in two nice rounded tablespoons of salt and it's in this we're going to give our sweet potatoes a little pre-cooking before we caramelize them in our glaze and then what we'll do once that's set is go ahead and peel our yams and then cut them as shown so let's go ahead and remove that skin as well as trim off those tips and then because of the tapered shape i like to cut two pieces off either end at which point we're going to cut this lengthwise but be careful these things are a little brittle so start slow with just a little bit of pressure and once we know we're centered we can use a rocking motion and a little more pressure and we will split that in half of course keeping our fingers out of the way and then once that's split we'll simply cut it across into about i don't know one and a half two inch pieces and as usual the exact size you pick is not the big deal the more important issue is that you try to get them as uniform as possible and not just for visual appeal although that's part of it but the real reason is so they all cook in about the same time and then what we'll do once our yams are cut is transfer those into our cold water at which point we can head to the stove where we will place this over high heat and bring it up to a simmer and then all we need to do once that starts bubbling is reduce our heat a little bit and simmer these until they're almost but not quite tender which is going to take a few minutes but i can't give you a time because it's going to depend on how big you cut yours so just like me you're going to have to test with a knife and for me these were still a little firm so i'm going to let them go and what we can do so we don't waste time is while we're waiting for our yams we can go ahead and put together our glaze so into a large skillet preferably non-stick we will add one fairly giant chunk of butter as well as some brown sugar i'm using light brown sugar but i'm guessing dark would work as well and then for a little extra holiday touch i'm going to also add a little bit of maple syrup and if you're keeping score at home i like to use grade b and if i remember i'll tell you why on the blog post but anyway moving on i'm also going to add some freshly squeezed lemon juice which is my big twist on this recipe since usually orange juice is used which for me with all this sugar not to mention a sweet root vegetable is just too sweet of a juice and yes i can totally see that lemon seed now that unbelievably i didn't see when i poured in the juice but it's fine at least people will know i use freshly squeezed lemon so just ignore that in fact let me distract you by adding some cinnamon as well as some ground ginger and then let's finish up with a little bit of cayenne and a generous pinch of salt and that is going to be it for our glaze what we'll do is bring that to the stove and place it on medium-high heat and we will cook that over medium-high stirring occasionally until everything melts and starts bubbling and once that happens we'll cook it for just a couple minutes until the sort of starts to thicken up and those bubbles get a little bigger and everything's starting to look a lot stickier at which point we can turn off the heat and wait for our yams which should be just about perfect now so we'll give those another test with our knife and like i said what we're shooting for is something that's almost tender but not quite because what's going to happen is these are going to finish cooking in the glaze so once our chunks of yam are about 90 tender we'll grab our strainer and transfer those into our glaze and don't worry it's totally fine if you get a few drops of water in this as you're transferring that's all part of the show and then all we need to do once our yams are in the pan is crank our heat up to high and cook the stirring or flipping occasionally until they are cooked through and our glaze is thick into our liking not my liking your liking okay so not a very complicated procedure we'll just keep an eye on things and we'll keep those yams moving around while at the same time checking for doneness with our poking knife and while we definitely don't want these so soft they fall apart we really do want them nice and tender and mine were getting very close but i decided they needed a few more seconds and sure if you feel like showing off and you mastered our pan flipping technique that would work here but be careful if you do it wrong you're going to have an incredibly terrible mask to clean off your stove not to mention a few serious burns so only try that if you've practiced and or you've had a couple glasses of wine but anyway like i said we're going to simply continue to cook that on high until our yams are tender and our glaze is thick into our liking and for me personally this is about how far i like to go all right i definitely want a nice shiny thick glaze but i don't want a super thick gloppy sort of caramel sauce so i think that's perfect right there and other than giving this a little taste be careful it's hot but other than giving this a taste we are pretty much ready to serve so we'll go ahead and pull that off the heat and transfer that into a slightly more attractive serving vessel and once we've done that of course we're also going to spoon over any and all extra glaze over the top and by the way you didn't hear this for me but this stuff might actually be better over ice cream than it is over these yams it's true i've heard that from people but anyway we're going to go ahead and serve that up and that my friends if i do say so myself looks absolutely gorgeous and if we served it like this exactly zero people would complain but for that little extra special holiday touch i'm gonna go ahead and sprinkle over some chopped pistachio sure pecans would be more traditional but i really enjoy that color contrast between the green and the dark orange but anyway that's up to you you guys are the uncle sams of your candy dams but i'm gonna go pistachio because that thing i said a few seconds ago and that's it our candy dms are ready to enjoy and i don't want to pat myself in the back too much here i mean that's what the comments are for but i really do think using lemon juice over the orange juice here makes a huge difference and generally i'm not into these sweet holiday side dishes i mean if it's top of mini marshmallows i don't want any but while relatively sweet i think this version actually retains a lot of its savoriness or at least enough and like any great holiday side dish this is amazing hot incredible warm and fantastic room temperature so that should take a little pressure off when you're trying to time this with the rest of the meal but anyway that's it candy dms once a year we are allowed to eat root vegetables in candied form and this is that time of year so i really do hope you give these a try soon head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts and more info as usual and as always enjoy sweet potato muffins that's right you've had sweet potatoes in pies and possibly casseroles with little marshmallows on top but did you know the sweet potato also makes an incredible muffin as i believe these pecan studded beauties prove and with thanksgiving right around the corner i think the timing is perfect for you to learn how to do this so let's go ahead and get started and to make these you're going to need a couple cups of cooked mashed sweet potatoes and one very likely scenario is you would make these with leftover sweet potatoes but if you don't have any of that around you're gonna have to cook and mash some sweet potatoes from scratch and sure you could peel and boil them but my favorite way to be either roast these in the oven or like i did these microwave them until very soft and then all i need to do is split them open and scoop that soft flesh into a bowl so we will review that on the blog post but one way or another you're going to need two cups of pure mashed sweet potatoes and once we've taken care of that we will move on to the dry ingredients where we will begin with a little white on white so in a bowl we have a couple cups of all-purpose flour to which we're going to add some baking powder as well as baking soda and then like just about everything we make we're also going to need some salt as well as some spices so we'll go ahead and toss in a generous amount of cinnamon as well as some ground ginger and then we'll do a little pinch of freshly grated nutmeg so even though we are doing muffins here we are definitely borrowing on the flavor profile from a typical sweet potato pie and then what we'll do is we'll grab a whisk and mix this thoroughly and of course that's in lieu of sifting so we'll go ahead and whisk that enthusiastically for about a minute at which point we can move on to the wet ingredients so in a mixing bowl we're going to start with four large whole eggs to which we're going to add some white sugar and i know that's a terrifyingly large amount but don't worry we're also adding brown sugar and then we'll go ahead and we'll take a whisk and mix this for about two minutes until the mixture gets kind of light and foamy and looks like this and once that's been accomplished we're going to stop and introduce some vegetable oil and yes i realize that's a lot of oil but that's fine because we're going to balance that out by adding some melted butter and then we can go ahead and whisk all that together at which point we can bring everything together to form the final batter so in a large mixing bowl we have our now cooled mashed sweet potatoes to which we're going to add about a cup of chopped pecans and as usual anytime we have nuts in a recipe those are optional but they are very highly recommended in this and then to this we'll go ahead and dump in our wet ingredients and then last but not least the dry ingredients and then all we need to do is simply mix this together and i'm going to stick with the spatula because i just used it to scrape the wet ingredients in here but a whisk would also work and basically all we want to do is mix this until the dry ingredients disappear and then stop and by the way any kind of variety of sweet potatoes going to work here as you'll notice i'm using the orange fleshed ones which are very often incorrectly sold as yams because they're really not true yams but regardless any sweet potato is going to work i just prefer the orange flesh because it looks nice and from what i hear is a little better nutritionally but anyway we're going to go ahead and mix this together like i said just until our dry ingredients disappear at which point we're going to stop and we'll let this sit for about 10 minutes while we prep our muffin pan which is going to be very simple we'll go ahead and line our pan with these little paper muffin cups and even though they're made out of parchment paper and claimed to be non-stick i do like to give these a little spray with the vegetable oil just to be safe there's nothing worse than tearing that paper off a muffin and have it half the muffin stick to it and then once those are set we can go ahead and transfer our batter in and for me the easiest way is to just use some kind of scoop and i'm not sure exactly who they are but they say you should fill these up about three quarters of the way and if you do this recipe will make two dozen muffins but you know what i'm an overfiller from way back so as you can see i filled these almost all the way to the top so i only ended up getting about 20 which was still way more than i needed and then to finish these off we're going to go ahead and add some more chopped pecans to the top mostly for appearance but also to warn people who are deathly allergic to pecans that these could be dangerous and then last but not least we're going to give the top of each one a little sprinkling of demerara sugar which is nothing more than sugar that's just a little larger grain a little larger crystal and once these are baked that's going to give that top a little bit of extra texture as well as a little bit of a shine sort of a sparkle think of that demerara sugar as like muffin bling and then once those are sapped we're going to give it the whole tapatapa oh it's been a while we'll give that a couple bangs on the table to settle the batter down at which point we can transfer that into the center of a 350 degree oven for 25 minutes or until they look like this and of course to make sure they're done you could always poke the center with a bamboo skewer and if it comes out clean like that they're done and of course if that came out with a bunch of wet batter on it you got to give more time and then what we'll do is we'll just let them sit right in that muffin pan for about 10 minutes to cool down a little bit before carefully removing them to a rack to cool and as soon as they cool completely they're ready to enjoy except i'm going to be honest here i did not wait they looked and smelled too amazing so i decided to tear into one while was still warm as you can see they have a glorious color and the texture for me is just perfect moist rich tender not too crumbly not too cakey and believe it or not surprisingly light so for me the perfect combo is something that seems very decadent very rich and yet isn't too heavy or sweet and we're obviously calling them muffins here but in case you were wondering yes if you frosted these with maybe a cream cheese frosting or some kind of marshmallow buttercream is that even a thing probably but if you frosted these you could totally call them cupcakes but either way muffin or cupcake frosted or unfrosted these really are fantastic so i really do hope you give these a try soon head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts and more info as usual and as always enjoy [Music] sweet potato biscuits that's right we've done sweet potato muffins and sweet potato rolls so i thought i would complete the handheld sweet potato baked goods trilogy with what turned out to be these amazing biscuits and this was originally intended to be something you could do with leftover sweet potatoes after thanksgiving dinner but these came out so well now i'm thinking you should cook some sweet potatoes ahead of time and make these to serve along with your turkey but either way we're gonna need some cooked sweet potatoes so i'm gonna go ahead and peel this orange fleshed variety which is generally sold in the grocery store as a yam but it's really not it's simply an orange variety of sweet potato i think that was simply a marketing thing but anyway once we have that peeled and the tip's trimmed off we'll go ahead and cut that in half using sort of a rocking motion and i do that because the texture is kind of brittle and it tends to fragment so kind of a slow rocking motion works best for me and then once halved we'll go ahead and cut those pieces in half and then in half again and then yes you guessed it each of those pieces in half but because we're working with something that has sort of a tapered shape we'll want to cheat our cut up a little bit towards the big end which will hopefully help cook these slightly differently shaped pieces evenly and by the way since i have no idea of the size and shape of your sweet potato you might need to cut yours in a different number of pieces but that's fine just try to get them about the same size and you'll be okay and then what we'll do once that's prepped is transferred into our pan where we will cover it with cold fresh water and add a nice big spoon of salt and then we'll want to bring this up to a simmer on high heat because what we'll do once that comes to a simmer is cook that on medium-low until our sweet potato is tender as tested with the tip of a knife and in case you're keeping score at home mine took about 17 minutes and then what we'll do once done is drain those very very thoroughly and then we'll simply return those to the pan and mash them until very smooth and that is pretty much it for our sweet potato prep all right we don't need to add anything else no salt no butter no milk just pure sweet mashed sweet potato and then very important we need to let this cool down to room temp before we use it alright so make sure you do this step first and then once that's cooled down we'll transfer that into a mixing bowl and toss in a little touch of brown sugar as well as some buttermilk or if you want regular milk but i think the tanginess of the buttermilk really works perfectly with the sweet potatoes and then all we need to do is mix this together with a spatula and once combined we'll simply set that aside and move on to our flour butter mixture so in this bowl i have some self-rising flour which is i've tried to convince you over the years is one of the secrets to beautiful biscuits since it has the perfect amount of baking powder and salt milled right in and then to our self-rising flour we're going to grate in some frozen butter oh yeah you heard me we're going to pop our butter into the freezer before we make this and then grate it in using a cheese grater and about every third to a half stick we'll want to stop and toss that with a fork to coat it in the flour because we don't want it all clumping together so we will continue grating and forking forking and grating until it's all been introduced and normally we do this by adding all the butter at once and then using a pastry blender to cut the butter into the flour but this is basically doing the same thing and once this dough gets mixed we're actually going to end up with slightly bigger pieces of butter in there which is going to work a little better for this recipe since we are including that mashed sweet potato which sort of throws things off a little bit but anyway like i said we're going to grate that butter in mixing it occasionally with the fork and once it's all in there what we'll do is make a wall in the center and transfer in our sweet potato mixture which again you made sure was completely cooled because if our sweet potato mixture is warm it's going to melt that butter and we will not get the same awesome flaky texture and then what we'll do once our sweet potatoes have been combined with our flour mixture is grab our fork and start mixing this together using sort of a tossing folding motion until it just about almost starts coming together into a shaggy dough but not quite as shaggy dough because i much prefer the biscuit method where we finish mixing the dough on the work surface okay so that's what i'm going to do i'm going to stop right at this point where if we want we could kind of smoosh it together and i'm going to go ahead and transfer that onto my table and then what we're going to attempt to do with our bare hands is somehow press this together into some sort of rectangular shape about an inch and a half or so high and while we're doing that we'll want to completely ignore how terrible this looks okay so just sort of press it and push it as shown not worrying about spots that seem very wet or others just seem very dry and then once we've somehow wrestled that mixture into a rectangular shape like this we will grab our bench scraper and give this a try fold just like we're folding up a letter which i just realized many of you younger viewers may have never done but anyway we'll fold that in thirds and then give the whole thing a turn like this at which point we will repeat step one and somehow press this back into a rectangular shape sort of gathering and pressing in all those loose pieces and at any time if your hands start sticking to the wetter spots feel free to dust on a little flower and the only difference between the second pressing and the first pressing is we're going to press this out a little thinner maybe to a thickness of about an inch and then once we have it looking about like this we'll use our bench scraper to scoop up any loose bits and add that to the center and then what we'll do is give it one last tri-fold and then we will turn it again and the theory here is by the time this is all formed our dough is perfectly mixed but not over mixed and thanks to those particles of butter in the folding we did we are going to have a fabulously flaky biscuit with lots of beautiful buttery layers and now that all our folding and turning is done all we need to do is press this back out into our final shape which for me is going to be a rectangle about an inch high and then once we're happy with our final shape and our surface is relatively smooth we'll want to take a knife or our bench scraper and trim off just a little bit of the sides and i know you're not supposed to use a knife on a metal table but i did i'm not pressing that hard and if you want you could use the bend scraper but i do prefer the knife and it's these nice clean cuts that allows our biscuits to rise to their maximum height all right if your edges are smeared together it just doesn't work as well and yes of course you're going to push all those scraps together and make one extra mutant biscuit that you will eat in private and then once trimmed i'm going to go ahead and cut this in eight pieces right this recipe usually makes 12 normal sized biscuits or eight gigantic sized biscuits which by the way work way better for leftover turkey sandwiches and on the other hand you could even make more than 12. right this recipe could also make 24 gorgeous little mini biscuits so you make these as big or small as you want the only thing that's going to change a little bit is the baking time but anyway once those are portioned we'll go ahead and transfer those onto a silpat line baking sheet and of course we'll space those as evenly as possible and then before we pop these in the oven we will do one optional but totally mandatory step and that's going to be to brush the tops with a little bit of melted butter so suit yourself but i highly recommend it and it helps these brown up nicely and then once those tops have been brushed with butter we will go ahead and transfer this into the center of a 425 degree oven for about 20 to 25 minutes or until beautifully browned and looking like one of the greatest batches of biscuits you've ever seen i mean come on look at those and as promised thanks to those nice clean cuts as well as our proprietary techniques we've gotten some beautiful height not to mention provocative layering and then as difficult as it might be we really do want to let these cool down a little bit before we tear into them and to distract you what we can do while we're waiting is give these one more light brushing with butter just like they always do in biscuit country so i went ahead and brushed down a little more butter and let these cool down until they were perfectly warm at which point i served one up along with some pomegranate butter which i will tell you how to do on the blog so let me go ahead and split this open so we can show off our buttery layering and i'm going to spread some of that pomegranate butter onto the bigger piece and that my friends was just an insanely perfect biscuit okay crispy flaky biscuits aren't that hard to make and tender moist biscuits aren't that hard to make but a crispy flaky tender moist biscuit is not that easy and that's exactly what we had here which reminds me why am i eating this open face let me put these pieces together so i can double my flaky crispiness and while this butter spread really was magnificent imagine these used for like a ham sandwich or as i already mentioned some leftover turkey and cranberry sauce oh yeah but anyway how you enjoy these is going to be up to you you guys are after all the ponce de leon's of what the brits call scones so i hope you explore all kinds of different pairing options but anyway that's it my take on sweet potato biscuits whether you're going to make these after your feast with leftovers or making beforehand to serve with your turkey thereby blowing the minds of your guests i really do hope you give these a try soon so head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts and more info as usual and as always enjoy sweet potato casserole with pistachio crust that's right we're doing our take on the classic thanksgiving side dish and unlike many sweet potato casseroles this one is not too disgustingly sweet okay so we're gonna start by peeling and cubing about two and a half pounds of sweet potatoes and i know what you're thinking hey those are yams no they're not anything you buy in an american grocery store is a sweet potato some of the orange flesh varieties are just called yams for reasons i don't have time to go into here okay so you know the drill it doesn't matter how big you make your cubes as long as they're all basically the same size so they cook in about the same time so you're the boss of your sweet potato cutting here actually i should have said dictator so we're going to throw those in a pot with some water and a big pinch of salt we're going to put that on high heat and we're going to boil those until just tender you're going gonna test with a knife or a skewer and mine are perfect i want you to drain those really well and then we're gonna transfer those back into the pot with a couple tablespoons of butter and we're just gonna mash those and reserve now i would have showed you the entire mashing process but my battery died but that's okay you could figure out the rest just go until they're all mashed and set them aside till needed so the rest of the casserole ingredients are as follows a couple large eggs some maple syrup a little bit of real vanilla extract a pinch of cayenne a dash of allspice a pinch of salt some buttermilk and regular milk and by the way you can do this all with one or the other but i do like the combination the buttermilk gives it a little bit of tanginess which of course works with all the sweet elements and speaking of sweet elements i really like the maple syrup here versus the traditional sugar or brown sugar i just think it's a little more interesting and not quite as sweet okay so once that's mixed we're going to add our mashed sweet potatoes but not all at once i don't want to curdle the eggs so put in a spoon mix that in that will what's called temper the eggs which means raise the temperature up slowly then i put another big spoon mix that in now the mixture is kind of hot then i can just dump everything in okay so we're going to add all our mashed sweet potatoes to our egg milk mixture and when it's mixed we're going to transfer that into a lightly buttered casserole dish all right your standard what is that two and a half quart casserole dish all right really doesn't matter as long as it fits and you have room for the topping which is a perfect segue to the topping so with apologies to all you mini marshmallow fans out there we're going to use something a little different we're going to use a pistachio crust which is super simple to make take a handful of roasted salted pistachios and chop them up you're going to want about a half cup to two-thirds of a cup and to that we're going to add some brown sugar light brown sugar all purpose flour and melted butter okay so take a spoon or a fork and mix that together make sure it's completely completely mixed there's no such thing as over mixing this so don't believe the hype okay once it's mixed i just want you to crumble that evenly over the top i like to use my fingers it's just a little too thick and sticky to spread or spoon once it's crumbled over the top like that i want you to take the back of a fork and just very very gently press it down in all right just like that that is ready for the oven which is set at 350 and we're going to go ahead and bake that for about 25-30 minutes or so until the top is browned and the sweet potato is set now if you want to cheat like i did you could turn on the broiler for like a minute at the end just to give that crust a little bit of extra caramelization which i think works nicely and there you go our sweet potato casserole with pistachio crust is done and looking magnificent and of course you know what's coming next let this rest a little while before you try to serve it which of course i could not do i had a tear into this it was just smelling so amazing i had to take a spoonful and there it is those starchy subtly sweet potatoes accentuated with that maple syrup that pistachio topping just a wonderful wonderful combination of taste and textures so you may have a traditional sweet potato casserole you make every year and if you do god bless you keep making it but if you're looking for something a little bit different this year maybe something a little more interesting a little more creative give this a try people will love it trust me so head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts as usual and as always enjoy sweet potato gnocchi that's right i'm going to show you how to produce little pillows of pasta using a sweet potato which is going to be a lot of fun and pretty easy and since we're using the orange flesh sweet potato i was just about to say also nutritious but then i remember we're going to be saucing this with a bacon butter so i guess we'll put good for you in the maybe column but definitely fun easy beautiful and most importantly delicious so with that let's go ahead and get started by taking one large sweet potato and performing the old pokken roast which just means taking a sharp knife and pricking the skin all over before we roast this until it's completely tender which i like to do in the microwave since it's fast and easy but you could also of course do this in the oven okay it really doesn't matter as long as when you're done it is very very very soft which we will know for sure by poking with a knife and then what we'll do once this is cool enough to handle although still very warm is go ahead and split that in half and then using a spoon we'll go ahead and scoop all that gorgeous orange flesh into a bowl oh and i should mention these orange ones are often sold as yams at the store purely for marketing purposes but they're not they're actually just orange flesh sweet potatoes and while any variety will work these orange ones are clearly the most beautiful and from what i hear the most nutritious and that's it once all that flesh has been scooped and scraped from the skin we'll go ahead and take a potato masher and smash this nice and smooth which you can definitely do in a food processor but it's been my experience that cleaning a food processor is way harder than this and while using a machine we'll get this a little smoother with just a couple minutes of mashing with a hand tool this is going to be plenty smooth and then once that's set we'll go ahead and add one optional ingredient a nice spoon of ricotta cheese and if you don't have it or don't want to add it this will still work but i do think these are a little nicer with a little touch of that in there we will also toss in one large beaten egg as well as of course some salt and definitely a few shakes of our good old friend cayenne pepper and then what we'll do is take a spoon and give this a very thorough mixing until all of those ingredients are thoughtfully combined and as far as simple everyday meditations go you really can't be stirring something together all right scientists can't explain it but it really does make you feel better but anyway once we have that well mixed and we're feeling nice and relaxed we'll go ahead and add some all-purpose flour and we'll continue mixing with the spoon right sort of slowly at first if for no other reason than so we don't knock all the flour out of the bowl and then once that flour does start to get incorporated we can begin to stir a little more aggressively and basically we're going to keep stirring until the mixture comes together and we think we can switch to working it with our hands and by the way if you have to add a little more flour for that to happen go ahead and once we've reached that point we'll go ahead and transfer that from the bowl to our work surface which is the surface upon which we work and our entire game plan here is to just work in enough flour with some very gentle kneading and massaging until we achieve a dough that we're able to roll out into like half inch thick ropes and if the dough seems too wet and it's sticking to the table or to your hands just add some more flour until it stops doing those things and while it is true this stuff would be easier to work with if we added a ton of flour that would also make our gnocchi very dry and heavy and tough whereas what we really want with these is something that's moist and relatively tender so right about here my dough was feeling pretty good so i stopped and formed it into some kind of uniform shape at which point i dusted it with flour and then grabbed my bench scraper so i could cut it into quarters to begin the rolling process and since it had been a while since i made these with this first piece i made two major mistakes all right first of all i applied way too much flour which means there was not enough friction for this dough to grip the table and my hands so i didn't have enough of what we call in the business gription okay when you use that much flour the dough just kind of slides through it or as we say snow plows as i continue to just blatantly make up culinary terms and then the other mistake is this piece was too big as i think one eighth of this dough is probably a much easier size to roll out so i cut it in half but anyway i kept at it and eventually i did obtain enough gription to get this thing to roll out which generally we want to do in a direction from the center out towards the ends and sure there were a few hiccups along the way all right some spots still had too much flour while other spots were too sticky and needed more flour but as you know we never let the food win so i just kept at it and a couple minutes later i managed to roll this out into about a half inch thick rope or as my grandmother used to call it snake oh and for your information each roll i did after this one got a little easier and came out a little better so why didn't i film one of those well as the kids used to say to keep it real and once we do have that rolled out into a fairly uniform rope or snake we'll go ahead and dust the top with flour and then using our bench scraper which we should also flour we'll go ahead and cut these about every half inch to make some beautiful little gnocchi and if i thought my muscle memory was bad when it came to rolling the dough that was nothing compared to me trying to cut these i mean it really does look like i've never done this before but like i said the second one did go a lot better both with the rolling and the cutting which is why i'm going to show you to redeem myself a little bit oh yeah now we got the hang of it and no that was not sped up i'm insulted by your question and sure if you want to roll your ropes a little thicker and cut these into a little bigger pieces go ahead or as long as they're fairly consistent the size is up to you i mean you are after all the chuck d of your gnocchi but personally when it comes to this sweet potato version i think nice little small ones are the way to go okay i just think the final texture is a little better and as we finish these what we'll want to do is transfer those onto some kind of floured pan making sure they're nicely spaced and not touching at which point i like to let them sit and air dry for at least 15 or 20 minutes before we try to boil them and of course you can make these ahead and pop them in the fridge but i was hungry so i decided to enjoy some right now and while those are resting we can go ahead and bring some salted water up to a boil as well as prepare whatever sauce we're gonna finish these with which for me is gonna be some bacon infused butter although it's really probably more like a butter infused bacon but anyway what i did was slice up a few strips of bacon and brown it up in a pan over medium heat at which point i transferred in some butter that we can just simply let melt or if we want we can actually toast it a little bit until it turns sort of a golden brown and takes on a little bit of a nuttier flavor all right brown butter is a very common sauce for gnocchi and i like to do it both ways alright it depends on my mood in any event once we're happy with our butter we can go ahead and turn off the heat and finish this by stirring in some freshly minced rosemary or with some other sweet potato friendly herb like sage or maybe time and that's it we'll stir that in and simply reserve that until our gnocchi are cooked which i'm going to go ahead and do right now and please make sure this water is well salted all right the water should taste like seawater or as the italians say making sure the water tastes like a seawater sorry i'm not fluent but anyway we'll go ahead and transfer our gnocchi in and then we'll give them a quick stir and as we do you're going to notice two things these are all going to sink to the bottom but also turn into the most beautiful orange color you've ever seen all right check that out and then what we're gonna do is cook these for about three or four minutes or until they float okay that's how you can tell when they're done and if they do float you know you have a properly made gnocchi and if they don't float they're witches but don't worry they always float and once they do we'll go ahead and transfer those into whatever sauce we're using and we'll go ahead and turn our heat back onto medium or maybe a little higher if you want to fry these a little bit and that's it once these are heated with our sauce we are pretty much ready to serve and it's probably not a bad idea to give these a little more salt oh by the way if you did want to fry these a little more aggressively over higher heat you'll probably want to use a non-stick pan for that because these can stick but i'm not going to fry mine i'm just going to cook these stirring for about a minute before turning off the heat and finishing up with some freshly grated parmesan and that's it my adorable little sweet potato are done and ready to serve up in hopefully a warm bowl and once i had spooned in was basically an appetizer size portion i went ahead and finished with a little more cheese as well as the obligatory sprig of rosemary for the pictures and after taking a few of those i grabbed a fork and dug in and those my friends really were lovely and i was very happy with how they came out okay because i was careful not to work too much flour in they were not super dense and dry and chewy okay they stayed nice and moist and tender and again i think one of the keys here is making these nice and small just in case maybe you worked in a little too much flour or maybe work the dough a little too much and as far as the flavors go that earthy subtle sweetness from the sweet potato works so well with the bacon and also that little touch of rosemary and of course copious amounts of butter and parmesan never hurts and while this really was an ultra simple way to enjoy these they don't really need a lot of help to shine but having said that these would work in your favorite pasta sauce whether that is a simple tomato-based marinara or maybe a rich and decadent gorgonzola cream sauce oh yeah that would be good or really anything you'd serve regular potato gnocchi with and right here i was trying to cut one in half so you could see the texture inside but they're too small so you'll just have to trust me and as fantastic and appetizer as this makes do not be afraid to use this as a side dish right especially since you can boil these ahead of time and then just heat them up in the pan of whatever you cooked as your main course whether that's a pork chop or piece of chicken or a steak or whatever but anyway whether you serve these as a side dish or as an appetizer or a main course the important thing is that you serve them which is why i really do hope you give these a try soon so please follow the links below for the ingredient amounts a printable written recipe and much more info as usual and as always enjoy [Music] sweet potato pan dumplings with bacon butter that's right before this recipe was a smashing success it was an epic failure and i came very close to tossing everything in the bin halfway through but i didn't i pressed on and the results were amazing so in addition to learning a recipe you're also getting a very valuable life lesson so stay tuned for that but in the meantime let's go ahead and get started with one large sweet potato this bad boy went about 12 ounces and what we need to do first is roast this which i'm going to do in the microwave after pricking it a few times with this knife so it doesn't explode which is probably not going to happen but i do it anyway plus it's kind of fun talking about exploding potatoes and we'll go ahead and nuke that until it's very tender okay we want this completely cooked through and very soft and once it is we'll let that cool down just a little bit before cutting it in half and carefully scooping out all the insides and then once we have all that sweet potato in a bowl minus the skin we'll go ahead and give it a good mashing and you really do want to try to do this while it's still warm because everything's going to mix in much better so we'll go ahead and give that a proper and thorough mashing at which point we'll stop and clean that off and proceed to add the following ingredients which are going to be one large egg as well as a quarter cup of goat cheese or cream cheese or formage blanc but i really want you to use the goat cheese since that tanginess really works with the sweetness of the potato and then we'll also toss in some freshly ground black pepper and a little shake of cayenne as well as of course some salt and then what we'll do once all that's in is go ahead and switch to a whisk and we'll mix this until it's all thoroughly combined and how you can tell is just by looking at it right just keep stirring until it all looks like mashed sweet potatoes and then once that's accomplished we'll go ahead and add our last ingredient which is going to be some self-rising flour which is nothing more than regular all-purpose flour that has some baking powder and salt milled into it and as always i will tell you how to make your own on the blog and once that's in we'll just take a spatula and mix this up until it all disappears believe it or not that's it all we have left to do is cover this in plastic and pop it in the fridge for an hour or more so we can give it a little bit of time for that flour to hydrate and for all those ingredients to get acquainted but don't worry while we're waiting for that we have a very exciting task to perform and that's going to be to make our bacon butter which is what we're calling butter that we cook some sliced up bacon in and what we want to do is cook that over medium heat until the bacon is almost but not quite crisp and the reason is we're going to finish our dumplings by frying them in this butter and if the bacon's already crisp it might get overcooked so what we want to shoot for is about this doneness where it's almost but not quite getting crispy and as you'll see that's going to work out quite nicely later and since we are making that ahead once it's done all we need to do is turn off the heat and just set that next to the pot we're going to boil our dumplings in so that we can crank that back up to medium-high when we're ready to finish the dish and then assuming our dumpling dough is sat long enough we'll pull it out of the fridge and grab a couple spoons with which we're going to form these dumplings and all we have to do here is take some dough with one spoon and then we'll use the other spoon to shape it and or push it off into the boiling water which by the way is the next step so what i'm going to do at this point is transfer five of these into this boiling salted water and basically when you're boiling dumplings like this that you're going to fry after as soon as they float you're pretty much done and since that's only going to take a minute or two we're definitely going to want to get our bacon butter hot next to this pot because once these float we're going to transfer them straight into that pan to finish them in that hot butter so like i said i formed five and waited for those to come up to the surface and yes those were looking a little fragile but i'm nothing if not optimistic so i went ahead and transferred those into my hot pan of bacon butter hoping for the best except i didn't get the best what i actually got were some wet plops of disappointment frying in bacon butter and i was not happy and i probably cursed and i was just about to stop and toss everything out but then i remembered something i've told you guys in the past never let the food win so i didn't throw it out what i did was take the silicone spoonula and i tried to separate these back into five dumpling like objects and i let those cook over medium-high heat for about three minutes hoping by some miracle they would crust over and i would end up with something edible which is sort of what happened the surface actually crusted up quite nicely and sort of what i originally envisioned so i went ahead and flipped those over feeling a little better about things and i gave that second side about three minutes at which point i transferred those onto a warm plate and proceeded with my plan garnish which was a little scoop of goat cheese some green onions and of course our bacon butter and as i took these first few bites all i could think was how horrible it would have been had i thrown all this away because these really were fantastic right that contrast between that tangy cheese and that kind of starchy sweet potato and i thought that little garnish of extra cheese was a nice touch and of course nothing's not great with bacon butter on it but the one problem these did have was the texture okay they just got too waterlogged in the pot so they weren't really able to fry up like i wanted and that's when i had the epiphany what if instead of trying to fix the dough we just skipped the salted water and put these right into the hot pan so i whipped up another batch of bacon butter and spoon that dumpling dough straight in and gave those about three or four minutes aside and while they were still very soft to work with and i had to be very careful turning them they ended up cooking up a lot nicer and looked significantly better and i said about three or four minutes per side but basically when they spring back they're probably done and by the way you can test with a toothpick if it comes out clean they're done so i fried those up and transferred those to another worm plate and i garnish those exactly like the first batch except nicer with a scuba goat cheese along with our bacon butter and some green onions and that was it what i was originally going to call sweet potato dumplings had just become sweet potato pan dumplings since we skipped that boiling step and while the first batch truly was delicious this batch was exceptional these things just had the most beautiful crusty exterior surrounding a very light but still satisfying center and all the things i liked about the first batch how it was great with the goat cheese and all that stuff was even more true here so the moral of the story i guess is don't quit and keep going and follow your dreams and stay in school but mostly the lesson is a roasted sweet potato makes some really nice pan dumplings especially when you garnish it with bacon butter which reminds me while the bacon butter was incredible there are many other sauces that would probably work right here like i'm thinking some sage brown butter or maybe a lemon cream sauce so how exactly you serve these is going to be up to you i mean you are after all the mr clean of your pan dumpling and speaking of handsome muscular bald men i'm going to recommend that you not only consider these as an option for an appetizer or like a pasta course but also is an incredibly creative and delicious side dish for something like a grilled pork chop in fact i could go for a plate of that right now except i just had two plates of dumplings but anyway no matter what course you use these for or how you sauce them or what you end up serving them with i really do hope you give them a try soon so head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts and more info as usual and as always enjoy [Music] lemon pepper sweet potato crisp that's right i am very excited to be sharing my new favorite sweet potato side dish and i can't decide what i enjoyed more the incredible textures or the amazing flavors so i'm gonna call it a tie and there's no winner which is fine since everybody loves a tie alright i think that's why soccer's so popular but anyway this was truly fantastic and to get started the first thing we need to make are some extra large bread crumbs which we really can't buy so we're going to make them ourselves so i'm going to go ahead and take this hunk of bread and cut off the crust before we slice this up and the reason i'm trimming off the crust first is because crust does not crumb okay basically always stays this crust and i want something here that's going to be able to crumble plus the crust is already kind of dark and by the time we're finished with this dish those pieces might be too dark and then once our bread's been uncrusted and sliced into thin pieces we'll go ahead and turn it and cut it across like this and don't worry if you have a few bigger pieces here and there because as you'll see we're going to crumble this a little smaller as we apply it to the top of our sweet potatoes and then once that's been accomplished we will transfer that into a bowl and we'll go ahead and pour in some melted butter along with a nice big pinch of salt plus a few shakes of cayenne just to stay in shape and then we'll finish up with a handful of grated parmesan oh yeah the real stuff parmigiano-reggiano and once we've sprinkled that in slower than we need to we'll go ahead and take a spoon and mix this all up until it's evenly coated and then once we feel like that's definitely happened we will transfer this to a silpat line baking sheet and we will arrange that into some kind of uniform even layer and then what we'll do once we have that arranged as shown is go ahead and sprinkle over our second cheese which is going to be some grated sharp white cheddar and we will sprinkle that over the top as evenly as we can and in case you're wondering why didn't we just add the cheddar when we added the parmesan well that's a good question and the reason is that finely grated parmesan will actually stick to those buttered pieces of bread whereas the larger heavier grated cheddar will basically just fall to the bottom but using this method it's going to go over the top and melt down and into that bread once it goes in the oven which is the next step so once that's been chattered we'll go ahead and pop that into a 375 degree oven for about 20 to 25 minutes or until it's a beautiful golden brown and looks like this and even though this stuff is pretty crispy right now as it cools it's going to get even crispier so all we need to do at this point is let it sit while we move on to prep our sweet potatoes oh and while it's cooling do not do this or that because once you start you can't stop so we'll just leave that be and we'll move on to cut up some sweet potatoes which as you can see have been peeled and when they're this big i like to cut them in thirds so i have two pointy ends and then that large section in the middle and then we'll go ahead and have those end pieces using kind of a rocking motion with the knife since sweet potatoes are very dense so you want to cut carefully and then once that's done i'll go ahead and cut one piece off the end like that and then the next piece we can cut into two or three depending on how big you want it speaking of which i don't really care how big you make these pieces as long as they're all about the same size which of course is so they cook evenly and then as far as that larger middle section we'll go ahead and have and quarter those or if they're really big you can cut them across in three pieces but bottom line is we're going to try to match the size of the first ones we cut and then what we'll do once we've safely and carefully cut everything up is go ahead and transfer those into a mixing bowl and then what we'll do once we have those bowled up is grate over the zest of one lemon after which we will cut that in half and squeeze in the juice and of course when you see a recipe that calls for the zest and the juice always zest first and then juice and if you're not sure why try the other way around okay it will be significantly harder and yes lime would work here as well but lemon and black pepper go so well together that's why i go with the lemon but anyway after the juice is in we'll go ahead and sprinkle in some more salt as well as a very generous sprinkling of freshly ground black pepper plus a few more shakes of cayenne just to stay on brand and then last but not least we're going to finish this off with some melted butter and then what we'll do is take a spatula and toss this until everything is evenly coated at which point we can transfer this into a buttered casserole dish oh and do yourselves a favor as soon as you have everything tossed and coated in that butter transfer it immediately into the baking dish because what will happen if you stop and wash your hands and move the tripod and change camera angles that butter is going to cool off and congeal and look all clumpy like this okay you see that yours is not going to look like that but don't feel bad for me it's going to be fine i'll just have to give mine a toss halfway through the roasting which by the way is not a bad idea whether your butter clumped up or not and yes i just spoiled the surprise of the next step since what we'll do once we have that transferred in and distributed evenly is place these into the center of a 375 degree oven for about an hour or so or until very very very tender and how we know is we're going to test with the tip of a knife and it should slide in with virtually no effort so those were perfect and yes if you're doing this for a big holiday meal all this can be prepped ahead the potato part and the crumb part and then you can just put it all together when the timing's right and for that we will go back and break up our crispy cheesy crumbs and as we place these on i think we want to give them a nice pressing down so those jagged shards of cheesy crispy crumbs sort of adhere to those sweet potatoes underneath and by the way in hindsight i wish i'd crumbled these up a little smaller and you'll see why at the end when i'm enjoying some of these but anyway we'll go ahead and transfer over our crispy topping and like i said we'll give that a nice firm pressing and then before this gets finished in the oven i decided to grate on a little more cheese which i thought would maybe sort of glue the crumbs together a little bit which really didn't work but on the other hand more cheese and that's it this is now ready to finish off in the center of a 375 degree oven for another 15 or 20 minutes or until everything's beautifully browned and hopefully looking like this and that's it this is now ready to serve but before i do i like to take a barely damp paper towel and very lightly and carefully wipe those smudges off just to make it look a little nicer although don't press too hard or you will get burned in fact now i'm questioning whether i should have showed you that but anyway it does look nicer with a clean edge and speaking of looking nicer i went ahead and finished up with some freshly sliced chives and that's it my lemon pepper sweet potato crisp was ready to enjoy which we could do right away hot but here is some great news especially if you're doing this for thanksgiving or another special occasion dinner i think this might actually be better warmer room temp since i find all the flavors come out even more pronounced but also when you do a cheesy bready crisp topping like this it is actually believe it or not crispier once it cools and if you've ever made parmesan crisps you know exactly what i'm talking about so i did let mine sit and rest for a while before i serve some up and then after taking a few contractually obligated pictures i grabbed a fork and dug in and that my friends both texturally and flavor wise is just a magnificent bite of food the only slight issue is that next time i'm going to break up that topping a little smaller and push it into the potatoes much deeper so that we get a little more adherence okay that way we wouldn't have to do as much work getting everything on the fork and yes i used the term loosely it wasn't exactly work but a little bit smaller would have been a little more user friendly and then as far as the taste goes i have absolutely no complaints this was perfection okay we have those soft starchy sweet potatoes with the tanginess of the lemon and that little bit of heat and sharpness from the pepper and when you add the extreme savoriness of that crust with that little touch of bitterness you get when you cook cheese crispy it was just an absolutely tremendous combination of tastes and of course if you want to use different cheeses like pecorino or maybe a greer instead of cheddar go ahead i mean you guys are after all the chuck d's of which cheese and this technique should work out just about the same no matter what you go with but anyway that's it what i'm calling lemon pepper sweet potato crisp i absolutely loved everything about this and whether you're going to make it for a special occasion holiday dinner or just for some random weeknight supper i really do hope you give this a try soon so please follow the links below for the ingredient amounts a printable written recipe and much more info as usual and as always enjoy sweet potato souffle that's right it's a proven fact that people love puffy food and my all-time favorite puffy food is souffle and not just because souffles are gorgeous and delicious and versatile but also because people think these are really hard to make which they most certainly are not all right not even close especially the sweet potato version which eliminates like half the usual steps so with that let's go ahead and get started by roasting a couple sweet potatoes and i do recommend the orange flesh variety for this okay sometimes even the ones that are red on the outside are actually white on the inside so what i'll do if i'm not sure is give them a scrape and i'll check the color and these were in fact orange and then what we'll do before we roast these is sort of prick them here and there with the tip of a knife because apparently that lets the steam out and they won't explode hey that's what i heard and then once that's set we'll go ahead and cook these either by roasting them in the oven or doing them in the microwave which is what i did but either way we're going to roast or cook these until they're very very very tender all right one of the only ways to screw up this recipe is to not cook these soft and then we're just going to let these sit until they're cool enough to handle and i could have waited a little longer since these were still really hot and this step hurt a little more than it should have but i should mention these are way easier to scoop if they're warm or hot than if they're cold and of course if you're smart you could always put a towel in your hand but anyway we'll go ahead and scoop out all that beautiful soft tender golden flesh and if you've cooked these long enough you should end up with a pretty smooth mash but if not feel free to blitz these in your food processor or just work them over with a potato masher and then what we'll do once we're done with those tuber maneuvers is move on to the rest of the prep which will include separating some eggs okay we're going to put the yolks in one bowl and the whites in another and we could do that using the classic shell to shell method or the more fun and provocative let the whites slip through your fingers method okay both will work but no matter which one you use remember it's always okay to get a little bit of the white in the yolks but we never want to get any of the yolk in the whites because that's going to make it a lot harder to whip so please be careful and then once our eggs are separated the only other prep we have to do would be to butter some ramekins very very generously okay do not be shy with the butter and rub it all over all the way to the top of the rim and as you can see we're going to cook these on a baking sheet and once those are set we can move on to make our souffle batter which could not be easier since all we're going to do is add one generous cup of our mashed sweet potatoes to our bowl of egg yolks and we'll also toss in a splash of milk and then i'm going to go ahead and season this very simply with nothing more than some kosher salt and a very enthusiastic shaking of cayenne and then we can take a whisk and give this a mix and by the way whenever you're mixing ingredients where one is thin and one is thick your splashing potential is extremely high so we want to go a little bit slow when we start and then once it comes together you can crank up the rpms and once we do have that mix nice and smooth we can move on to our egg whites which we're going to be with a whisk but not before adding a pinch of salt and that's not just for flavor that salt's also going to help us whip these up into beautiful peaks and in case you're tempted to use your mixer don't okay this is going to happen in a surprisingly short amount of time okay so just use nice long circular strokes until we have some very luxurious relatively soft but still well-defined peaks so those are looking perfect right there and then once those are set we're going to add exactly half to our other bowl and we will sort of fold and stir that in and the reason we're doing two additions is this first one just lightens the mixture to get it ready for the second edition which is the much more important addition so this first half we don't have to use quite as light a touch okay we can be a little more aggressive with it and then once we have that first half folded in we'll go ahead and add the rest and we'll go ahead and fold that in being a little bit careful not to knock out too much of the air okay so basically we're working our spatula underneath bringing that batter up over the top and as we're doing that we're turning our bowl and eventually in a minute or two we should have everything nicely folded in and the better you are doing this and the more air you retain in this mixture the higher these souffles are going to puff and one very important thing here is knowing when to stop okay we're only going to spatulate this until the egg whites have almost but not quite totally disappeared all right they're going to be like 96 incorporated but if we happen to see a little egg white here and there that's fine because that's all going to get mixed in as we spoon these into the ramekins which by the way is the next step so let's go ahead and take a spoon and carefully transfer that in being as gentle as humanly possible and i'm going to suggest we fill these all the way to the top and by the way the amount of mixture we made is going to make between four and six depending on the size of your ramekin so i actually could have baked a fifth one but i didn't have the ramekin prepped so i just did four for the video and that's it once those are filled we're ready to transfer them into the center of a 425 degree oven for about 15 minutes or so or until they're beautifully browned and fully inflated and hopefully look a little something like this and as i probably mentioned in every other souffle video we've ever done if you're going to take pictures and or impress your friends make sure you do that right when these come out of the oven because they are going to deflate in a matter of minutes all right i took some pictures and this is what they look like literally three minutes later okay still gorgeous and amazing but they just don't have quite the same verticality and then what we'll do to serve is carefully transfer that onto a plate and then i decided just for fun to garnish the top with a fried sage leaf which of course is optional and up to you i mean you guys are after all the pips of what looks like green lips but anyway let me go ahead and grab a spoon and dig in while this is still hot and i could not have been happier with the taste or texture all right we want this moist but not wet and it really should be feather light with a texture that's ethereal bordering on otherworldly which is pretty much what i achieved and the flavor really was that of pure sweet potato which is what i was going for here but in the blog post i'm going to give you some other ideas of what to add to this as well as how to turn it into an amazing dessert so above and beyond being beautiful and delicious this is very versatile and will work as a first course or dessert or we could even unmold them which will totally work if you use enough butter and serve them like this as a side dish oh yes a platter of those would look nice next to your turkey so just another idea speaking of which if you were just thinking i would take some maple syrup and stir in a whole bunch of cayenne and use that to garnish the plate i like how you're thinking because that's what i thought and it really did work out amazingly well but anyway that's it how to make a sweet potato souffle whether you end up doing this as a fantastic first course or a sublime side dish or an extremely light yet still decadent dessert i really do hope you give these a try soon so head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts and more info as usual and as always enjoy [Music]

Channel: Food Wishes

Views: 104,267

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Id: 5cYVamhBL3c

Length: 68min 46sec (4126 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 06 2022