Sweet Potato tastes better dressed simply
The only sweet potatoes I recall eating as a youngster swam in brown sugar syrup and hid beneath toasted marshmallows. Consequently, this dish, generally served on Thanksgiving or Christmas, seemed more like dessert than a vegetable side dish. To be polite, I rolled my eyes and placed a small spoon full on my plate and hoped I could dump them when no one was looking. I preferred good old mashed white potatoes topped with gravy or smothered with homemade noodles.
A few years ago, I decided to try a baked sweet potato at a steak restaurant and was surprised when it arrived smothered with butter and brown sugar. It looked a lot like the syrupy side dish I recalled from my childhood, but I decided to dump the topping and try the unadulterated vegetable itself. I was surprised to find a mildly sweet delicacy beneath the overly sweet topping. I have been baking and enjoying baked sweet potatoes ever since; usually topped with a small dab of butter along with a taste of salt and pepper.
Since I find baked sweet potatoes so delicious, I recently decided to serve them to company. One person declined to partake of them explaining to me that he preferred yams. “Sweet potatoes are yams,” I told him.
“No, Yams are not the same,” he insisted. I decided not to argue with him since I’m not an expert on the subject. I always thought they were the same. The next day, deciding to find out the truth of the matter, I looked it up. Well, okay, I Googled it. This is what I found.
According to Bon Appétit, an American food and entertainment magazine, on their websitebonappetit.com the only real difference between sweet potatoes and yams at most American grocery stores is the price. Stores charged more for those labeled sweet potatoes and less for those labeled yams. I’ve purchased them both at different times and to me they tasted the same.
Reportedly, the Louisiana sweet potato growers created this name confusion in the 1930s when they marketed their orange-fleshed sweet potatoes as “yams” to distinguish them from sweet potatoes grown in other states. Cookbook author Mary-Frances Heck agrees and relates that the propaganda stuck.
Bon Appétit goes on to report, that there really are “real” yams, an entirely different root vegetable with starchy rather than sweet flesh that are used in Caribbean or West African cooking. These root vegetables are difficult to find in the United States, according to Bon Appétit, except in some specialty grocery stores.
According to ncsweetpotatoes.com, the U.S. Department of Agriculture now requires labels with the term “yam” accompanied by the term “sweetpotato” on all varieties of sweet potatoes sold in American grocery stores. That might be why most people continue to think of sweet potatoes as yams and that works for me as long as I get to choose my toping. No sugar or marshmallows, please.
While the meat of the sweet potato is already mildly sweet, baking intensifies that sweetness. For me a small pat of butter or nothing at all works well for a topping, but if I’m serving it with a meat that goes well with milk gravy, I’ve found that a small amount of the gravy blends well with the flavor of the sweet potato.
Gravy was one of the first things my mother taught me to make as a child, probably because I could make it while she got the rest of the food ready to sit on the table. “The secret,” she always told me was, “to match the amount of fat to the amount of flour and to cook the flour until the raw taste left it, being careful not to brown or burn it. It took me a while, but I eventually learned to make gravy, both white and brown, without burning the flour.
Breaded pork cutlet and baked sweet potato with white gravy
Ingredients:
1 7-to 9-Ounce Sweet Potato, scrubbed clean with vegetable brush
3-to 5-Ounce Boneless Pork Chop or 3- to 5- Ounce Pork Cutlet
Salt and pepper to taste
2 Tablespoons all-purpose flour, divided
1-2 Tablespoons vegetable oil, divided
¾ Cup milk
Salt and pepper to taste
Directions:
Clean and wrap scrubbed sweet potato in tinfoil. Bake in air fryer set at 400°F for 50-55 minutes (If you don’t have an air fryer, bake in conventional oven set at 450°F for 50-55 minutes.)
While potato is baking, season pork chop with salt and pepper and place in the center of a 1-gallon plastic bag. Pound with a meat mallet until about 1/8-inch thick (If using pork cutlet season and skip this step.) Pour 1 tablespoon of the flour in the bag and shake to coat both sides of the cutlet. Leave in bag until ready to fry.
Heat 1 tablespoon of oil in an 8-inch skillet over medium-high heat. Once oil is shimmering, shake excess flour from cutlet and place in skillet with oil. Brown the cutlet in the oil, turning halfway through, until browned on both sides. (5-10 minutes per side). Meanwhile heat a large dinner plate in the microwave.
Place the browned cutlet on the plate, cover loosely with foil and sit aside while making gravy.
To make the gravy pour the excess oil from the skillet, leaving any fonds in the skillet, and add enough additional oil to make one tablespoon. Return the oil to the skillet and heat over medium-high heat. Whisk 1 tablespoon of flour into the oil in the skillet then turn heat to medium-low. Cook flour, stirring, for 1-2 minutes. Do not brown flour.
Add milk, return heat to medium high and bring to a boil. Continue cooking until gravy begins to thicken. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
Remove foil from the baked sweet potato, remove peeling and cut into chunks. Pour small amount of grave over chunks of sweet potato, reserving small amount of gravy to pour over cutlet. Serve and enjoy.
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