Grandma Marcie’s Sweet Potatoes
This sweet potato recipe holds the special quality of being the first family recipe I ever learned. I learned this before I even started cooking, as it was always my favorite Thanksgiving recipe. I recall being back home from my first few months of university and going over to Grandma Marcie and Grandpa Bob’s house with a pencil and notebook so I could take notes as she walked me through making what she called her “Yams”.
She was wrong though. Despite what you may have heard, sweet potatoes and yams are completely different plants. You would be hard-pressed to even find an actual yam at your local grocery store. They both, however, are tubers that grow in the ground. The most likely theory as to why Thanksgiving Sweet Potatoes are typically referred to as Yams, dates back to the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Yams were common in African regions, but less so in North America. Africans who were happily and enthusiastically transplanted from one continent to the other would have likely seen sweet potatoes and named it according to the plant they were most familiar with - yams.
Despite changing the official name, though, this recipe is unaltered from the version Marcie gave me over ten years ago. Four basic ingredients: sweet potatoes, brown sugar, butter, and mini-marshmallows, arranged in layers in a casserole dish. It is incredibly sweet and compliments the savory and tart flavors that sit on your Thanksgiving plate.
Thanksgiving Sweet Potatoes
Ingredients
Instructions
- Boil Sweet Potatoes, let cool, peel.
- Slice sweet potatoes at an angle, into slices approximately 1 cm thick.
- Butter a casserole baking dish, begin layering sweet potato slices, butter slices, brown sugar, and marshmallows.
- Cover with foil, bake at 400° F for 50 minutes.
- Remove from oven, remove foil. Place a generous quantity of mini-marshmallows across the top of casserole dish.
- Broil for 3-4 minutes, until marshmallow layer is toasty.