First time I've grown sweet potatoes and they turned out very well. How do you store them? Had some for supper last night, they were very good. Nine plants and we got about twenty pounds. I planted them in half barrels and kept them watered well. 8)
They need to cure and be put to sleep. Brush them off and let the surface dry then store them in a warm place, relatively high humidity and dark, ideally 70°/ 90%rh, we don't hit anything like that but that is their preferred napping quarters. We keep a bushel or two in the upstairs bathroom in cardboard boxes. I had no idea they would grow that far north.
My grandfather always stored them outside in N. Fla in an old smokehouse packed in pine straw. I think the main thing is to keep them dry and don't let them freeze.
Try slicing them thin like regular potato chips and frying them in a deep fryer! They puff up just like regular potato chips and are excellent. Sweet potato fries are good as well as cooking them in butter and sugar for candied yams. Pretty hard to mess one up.
The best way to 'store' sweet potatoes are in a Sweet Potato Pie!!! :D
Well maybe not, the pies don't last too long around me... ;D
Quote from: WV Sawmiller on September 23, 2020, 07:39:26 AMTry slicing them thin like regular potato chips and frying them in a deep fryer! They puff up just like regular potato chips and are excellent. Sweet potato fries are good as well as cooking them in butter and sugar for candied yams. Pretty hard to mess one up.
We make seasoned wedges out of them. Peel and cut them up, then toss in oil and spices and cook for 20 mins in the air fryer. They don't really crisp exactly up like potatoes, but they still make good chips.
In NZ they are called Kumara and are a staple traditional food for the Polynesians / Maori. What's interesting is they are from South America, so it's thought they were bought from there in pre-European times by Polynesian voyagers that reached Sth America (and came home again).
Quote from: Don P on September 23, 2020, 07:20:49 AM
They need to cure and be put to sleep. Brush them off and let the surface dry then store them in a warm place, relatively high humidity and dark, ideally 70°/ 90%rh, we don't hit anything like that but that is their preferred napping quarters. We keep a bushel or two in the upstairs bathroom in cardboard boxes. I had no idea they would grow that far north.
We have them as well. So good with a pot roast or mashed with gravy.
Sawguy,
You are the first person I have met who puts sweet potatoes in their roast besides my wife. We do it all the time when we make a venison roast or back when we used to cook beef for roast. They are real good in there. I am concerned now that the word has gotten out there where be a sweet potato famine of epic proportions. :D
That surprises me, it is fairly common here.
The way I grew up the roasts were cooked with white taters, onion, carrots and some folks would even throw in some cabbage a few minutes before they took it out of the oven. I think I have seen turnips and parsnips in other places but down south we did not use them.
We use cream of mushroom soup as our base.
I'm not exactly sure how to spell it so you all can pronounce it correctly. The grandfolks grew sweet taters and iarsh (one syllable) taters. Growing up our supply often came from gleaning my uncle's fields. My grandfather was quite particular about storing them. If you woke them up by sorting or moving them around much you had to put them back to sleep with another warm humid curing period or they might go to the bad.
Quote from: WV Sawmiller on September 23, 2020, 06:52:12 PMYou are the first person I have met who puts sweet potatoes in their roast besides my wife.
Common way to cook them here too.
Another good one is in a slow cooker coconut chicken curry.
But best of all is a hangi (or umu if you are in Hawaii). Hot rocks and baskets of food buried in the ground for 1/2 a day. Done properly it comes out great.
I remember we trekked in to visit a remote tribe in Africa and at night before we went to bed I'd bury a couple of local sweet taters in foil in the ashes and we'd have them for breakfast the next morning. They were near perfectly cooked.
I quit growing them as being mt nesters we don't eat enough to store & justify them vs store bought-same for white taters. Borers can be a problem and ruin yer crop. But I like them!
In NC, one state where grown commercially you'll see them by the tons piled in huge piles inside storage buildings open to the world as you drive by.
If they move them I've not seen it happen. I always wondered if the critters had a filed day with piled up taters?
They are dirt cheap at a farmers mkt.. Local hillbillies seem to lean toward "white" sweet potatoes which are lime green when cooked yet to me have less taste. I'd never seen one in my native KS until I came here...
Hey - tread lightly on that "local hillbillies" stuff. :D This hillbilly prefers the darkest reddest yams he can find. ;D In Africa I never saw anything except white ones. They were good but kind of like comparing the taste between white and yellow grits or corn meal (yellow grits or meal just have much more flavor for the non-grit/cornbread eaters). The red ones just seemed to have more body to them. I know sweet potatoes are one of the recommended starter foods for babies/toddlers when starting them on solid food. They have good vitamin content and are naturally tasty.
KY's the 1st I'd ever seen the greenish one's->called white sweet potatoes.
For the record I've got dual citizenship. ;) 30 yrs in KS, 46 in KY... 8)
I actually like them fixed like a baked white potato or the syrupy way too.
BTW, I'm sawing the 6x10 oak beams for my cabin project and liking my new left knee brace in a serious way.