Recipes

Candied Yams / Candied Sweet Potatoes

Serves: 5+ (side dish) Time to prepare: 1 to 1.5 hours

A brief discussion about yams and sweet potatoes

Grocery stores where I live typically use the term “yam” and “sweet potato” interchangeably. Either will work for this recipe, but if your grocery store is better at identifying vetegables than mine is, you probably want sweet potatoes. The ones I buy have a reddish-brown skin resembling a large potato, an orange inside, and are quite large (just smaller than an American football).

Ingredients

• 2-3 kg of sweet potatoes (probably 1-2 large sweet potatoes)
• 1 cup (plus a handful) brown sugar
• 1/4 cup water
• 1 tablespoon butter
• Sprinkle/Pinch of salt

Steps

• Prepare a large cooking pot of water on the stovetop and set the burner on high
• While the water is coming to a boil, peel and cube sweet potatoes. Bigger cubes/chunks are better (try to go for about 1 inch cubes). I have tried this with smaller cubes, but it just doesn’t work as well.
• Boil sweet potato chunks for about 10 minutes. They will not be quite cooked yet, and that’s OK, they will be cooked again.
• Drain water and place in an oven-safe dish, such as a casserole dish, or a foil loaf pan. You do not need a lid. Set aside for now.
• Preheat oven to 450 degrees fahrenheit (230 degrees celcius)
• In a saucepan, mix 1 cup brown sugar, 1 tablespoon butter, and 1/4 cup water, and bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring frequently.
• Let boil until it tickens, 2-3 minutes
• Pour the sugar mixture over the sweet potatos, carefully stirring to coat the sweet potato chunks as best as you can without damaging the chunks.
• Sprinkle a handful or two of brown sugar over the coated sweet potato chunks.
• Sprinkle several pinches of salt over the chunks as well. A small amount of salt will enhance the sweetness of the sugar mixture and help bring out the flavour of the sweet potatoes.
• Put coated sweet potato chunks in oven and bake at 450 degrees for 20-30 minutes.
• If you can spare the dirty dishes, carefully transfer cooked sweet potato chunks into another large dish, and then back, to mix up any of the syrup that will have settled on the bottom of the pan.