Simple Candied Sweet Potato Recipes
Southern baked candied yams are a classic southern dish that is the perfect addition to your Thanksgiving table. Fork tender sweet potatoes chopped up and baked in the oven covered in a buttery, spiced brown sugar glaze. This soul food style recipe is a holiday tradition that's been in my family for generations!
“There is an idea prevalent that anybody can cook sweet potatoes, this is a very great mistake, and the many, many dishes of illy cooked potatoes that are placed before me as I travel over the South, prompt me to believe that these recipes will be of value.”
Let's get real: southern Thanksgiving food is the top-tier pinnacle arena of the ultimate comfort food. Getting stuffed on pie, juicy turkey (if you haven't had a juicy turkey, you need to try dry brining one!), different takes on potatoes, and some sort of greens cooked with smoked meat if your family really leans into their soul food.
Tender Melting Sweet Potatoes
But let me tell you about one of my favorite dishes on the table: candied sweet potatoes (which black folks call candied yams) has been on our holiday table every single year for generations.
My grandma taught me how to make these old fashioned sweet potatoes when I was a little girl, peeling potatoes and covering them in butter, spices, and brown sugar, before they went into the oven.
Yes, y'all. These are my Grandma Reid's yams, the best old fashioned southern candied sweet potatoes you will ever eat. Sweet, well-rounded in flavor, with a rich, buttery syrup, they're baked in the oven until the sweet potatoes are tender and the brown sugar mixture has given them a shiny candy coating.
Candied Sweet Potato Casserole
It's a southern tradition wrapped in simple ingredients and a candied glaze with a buttery caramel toffee flavor that really sings this time of year.
Don't think that we only make them for Thanksgiving, either. It's the perfect holiday side dish that goes phenomenally with Christmas dinner and Easter, too.
Want to impress your southern in-laws? Make these candied yams to bring over for a sunday dinner, watch how they'll love you even more!
Easy Candied Yams/sweet Potatoes {6 Ingredients}
Casserole dish - a baking dish that can hold the sweet potatoes in an even layer. I use a 9-by-13 inch baking dish.
Sweet potatoes, which originated in South America (modern Peru, actually), have tan skin, orange flesh, and grew well in Southern U.S. soil as a crop (and are now farmed mostly in North Carolina and Louisiana).
Black folks who were enslaved at the time would farm and create dishes like sweet potato pie with them, which is why they are so common as an ingredients in Southern and Black American cuisines.
Candied Yams: With Or Without Marshmallows
The origins of sweet potato dishes come from Europe around the 16th century, but unfortunately they never wrote down which potato they used while making sweet potato recipes so we aren't sure which type of potato they were using.
Candied sweet potatoes have been a classic holiday side dish for centuries, popular especially in the American South. It's different from the sweet potato casserole with marshmallow topping that's well known in the Northern states.
It's the soul food version: chopped up or sliced sweet potatoes that are coated in a mixture of butter, brown sugar, spices, and sometimes other ingredients like orange juice, that are baked or slowly cooked to become fork tender and syrupy.
Candied Yams (plus Video)
I really love my grandma's candied yam recipe, because baking the sweet potatoes brings out their natural sweetness and bakes the candied glaze right onto the potatoes.
In my opinion it's the best way to make candied yams, but that may be because it's the way my grandma makes them. I'll admit I'm biased.
Thetrue yamis not indigenous to the United States, but originate in Africa and Asia. They're a starchy root vegetable with brown bark-like skin and tougher white flesh, used in savory dishes.
Best Sweet Potato Casserole {with Candied Pecans}
So if you see the sign 'yams' at the grocery store, and you'll usually see the white flesh from where the yam was chopped exposed, with darker brown bark-like skin, that is a real yam, not the sweet potato you're looking for.
The three most common sweet potato varieties in the U.S. are theBeauregard, the Jewel, and the Garnet. All of these are fantastic to use in this recipe, with some slight changes in each potato.
Garnets have more moisture, which is great for baking in sweet potato pie, for yams, or sweet potato fries, and have a purple-ish reddish skin.
Southern Stove Top Candied Yams
When picking out sweet potatoes at the store look for ones that are small or medium in size, larger ones are starchy and tougher. They should feel firm and have smoother skin with no stab wounds or cracks or wrinkles.
Store the potatoes in a dark, cool environment. Light makes them think they're outside and they'll try to sprout. A bottom cabinet or dark corner of your pantry (or in a box in that back corner of the pantry) will do great.
Sweet Potatoes -Remember: choose small or medium sized potatoes that feel firm with smooth skin. Large sweet potatoes are too starchy. No wrinkles or war wounds!
Grandma's Southern Candied Yams Recipe
Brown Sugar - Bonus points for dark brown sugar (if you have run out of brown sugar, don't worry! I have aDIY brown sugar recipeusing granulated sugar).
Unsalted Butter -You can use salted butter if that's what you have on hand, I just like unsalted because you can control the salt content better.
Spices - Ground cinnamon is a must, but I also add ground ginger and freshly ground nutmeg. Classic fall flavors. You can totally use cloves or pumpkin pie spice as well. Don't forget a hearty pinch of salt. All sweet things need a little salt to balance out all that sugar.
Candied Korean Sweet Potato
Vanilla Extract -Whenever I forget the vanilla it's always a taste of 'something is missing but I can't put my finger on it'. Don't forget the vanilla!
This is an easy candied yams recipe, no need to run to the specialty stores or do anything crazy. It's probably going to be the most simple dish you'll make on Thanksgiving day, coated in a delicious sugar syrup and flavored with vanilla extract and warm spices.
As you see, with just a handful of ingredients you have fork tender sweet potatoes and the perfect addition to your thanksgiving dinner.
Candied Yams With Bourbon
The best part is that you just leave it alone in the oven for about an hour and boom, it's done! Super important when you're already so busy making the rest of your holiday meal.
You can really make this your own: add in orange zest, sub some of the brown sugar with maple syrup, or add other spices. A little cayenne for some heat won't hurt you!
I really feel that you get so much flavor by roasting in the oven versus cooking them on the stove top. Baking the candied yams caramelizes the sugars not only on the outside but inside the sweet potatoes themselves and evaporates away the excess moisture within them, so it intensifies the flavor instead of watering it down.
Baked Candied Sweet Potatoes
There's magic that occurs when the candied yams and the southern baked mac and cheese touch on your Thanksgiving plate. I'm so serious!
All the classic holiday foods work well with candied yams: a juicy roast turkey, a beautiful prime rib, or my mama's holiday cornish hens.
Storage: Cool your southern candied yams to room temperature before transferring them into an airtight container. Keep in the fridge for up to 4 days.
Carmelized Baked Sweet Potato Slices
Reheat: Reheat the candied sweet potatoes in a casserole dish in a low oven (325 degrees F) covered in aluminum foil until warmed through and the buttery syrup has melted again.
You can make candied yams ahead of time, keep them in an airtight container with the buttery syrup in the fridge up to 2 days before serving. Put them back into an oven-safe baking dish and warm at 325 degrees F until warmed through.
They can also be made ahead up to the baking part. Cover the sweet potatoes in the brown sugar-butter mixture, cover, and place in the fridge up to three days in advance. Bake the day of and serve hot! Easy and simple.
Candied Yams Recipe (southern Side Dish)
Because enslaved Africans trafficked to the US would call sweet potatoes 'yams' as they looked so similar to the root vegetable that they ate at home in Africa but did not have in the US. So while fresh yams and sweet potatoes are different root vegetables, their names have been used interchangeably to describe this classic southern dish.
Canned yams (canned sweet potatoes) can be used, but they may not get the same results as using fresh sweet potatoes. They are much more wet and release more moisture, but it can be done.
Sweet potato recipes were in many cookbooks in the 1800's, but sugar was considered an expensive luxury only used in holiday baking and recipes, so it was something special. It became a classic thanksgiving side dish because of this, especially in African American homes.
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Best Homemade Candied Sweet Potatoes Recipe For Thanksgiving
Some people like to par-cook the sweet potatoes by boiling them in their skins and stuff, but I don't want to be fussing with every dish during the holidays, you know? No need to
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