It has been drawn to my attention that the vast majority of people do not know how to cook yams! Especially Europeans, sorry, denizens of that there ‘civilised’ continent.
This is, of course, a total disaster and could cause the downfall of empires. Look what it did for the Mayans!
There have been terrible rumours of people assaulting this poor vegetable with marshmallows, what an excrescence!! A gluey blackened mess that even the pigs, (four legged, not you in the back there!) would not touch with a trotter.
Louisiana Yams have been part of my repertoire since my 70s sojourn in the Deep South. They go thus-
I yam per person. Garnet are the best variety, the red ones for the non colour blind. Peel, chunk and steam for 25 minutes until soft.
Transfer to oven dish no more than two yam chunks deep.
Dress with the following for about 6-8 yams
4oz butter, 1 cup honey, the juice of two lemons. Put in small jug and microwave until all melted, stir up. Pour over yams.
Bake at 350, basting regularly for 45 mins or so until they are just browning on the edges only.
The beauty of this recipe is that it may be made the day before and just popped back in the oven to reheat for twenty minutes. Any remainder can be reheated again and again for several days, just baste regularly
These come out sweetish but not ridiculous . tangy sweet not cloying. By far the best recipe for sweet potatoes I have ever found. One thing the Confederacy knew how to do was eat well. Pity they didn’t win!
PS The bastards ate them all up yesterday! I really don’t know where people put all that food! So now we are yamless today. total disaster!
Boadicea's Chariot 
CO, your opening salvo is a classic! 😄 I’ll never ignore a yam again – promise.
I wonder if yamless and gormless are related?
For the record and something completely different, the menu.
Smoked turkey with oyster stuffing
Chestnut dressing
Louisiana yams.
Indian corn pudding ( a vegetable dish)
Sprouts (for spousal unit by demand)
Cranberry sauce
Hazelnut pavlova filled with raspberry cream (mandatory desert by demand)
Statutory pumpkin pie (never cut, never is, but a MUST)
Cheeseboard
Interesting how different Thanksgiving dinner is from UK Christmas dinner. Only the turkey is common to both. Not an xmas pud or mince pie in sight. Both lurking on the sidelines in the cupboard awaiting their moment in the sun! Everything except the cheeseboard made from scratch from fresh ingredients. One of my regular guests is one of the top chefs in the county, he closes his restaurant on Thanksgiving and comes to me! I daren’t alter that menu in any way, my guests are all standing from year to year, I swear there would be a riot if I ever cooked anything else! They certainly all ate enough this year, ridiculous quantity seemed to disappear. A good evening. Needless to say the main topic of conversation was refugees. Two of the guests were Canadian and do not approve of swamping by Syrian either. Who does? I don’t know anyone who would welcome them next door!
Coincidentally this afternoon Mrs Jazz and I bought some yams (aka sweet potatoes) at Costco in Reading
We just coat them unpealed in olive or rape seed oil with a dusting of salt them bung them in the microwave on the ‘jacket potato’ setting for as long as Mr Panasonic deems necessary. Serve them as baked spuds cut down the middle with a knob of butter.
Delicious.
Yes baked is always good, what about adding a little sour cream to that.
My recipe is a good wake up for poultry. Turkey can be sooo boring, which is why I part smoke it, part roast it, adds a little something and have more inventive veg.
I’ve just googled ‘yam’ and apparently it isn’t quite the same thing as a sweet potatoe, although sweet potatoes are commonly called yams. So apologies for any confusion.
Re. Turkey I’m not really bothered although Mrs J likes it.
Sour cream can’t recall ever having tried it. I’m an old dog with simple tastes.
available in any UK supermarket. First the butter, pepper and then a spoonful of sour cream.
Thank you for the recipe, CO! I will pop into supermarket tomorrow and buy more yams and honey!
My contribution to Thanksgiving dinner was a spotted dick which amused female-type parent and her new partner. I’ve taken control of Christmas supper and will make a lamb roast, Yorkshire pudding, plum pudding and Swedes.
Christopher, Yorks pud with lamb! Sacrilege. And I prefer parsnips…..😋
Janus:the female-type parent is fond of it and demands it with every roast. If I had extended you an invitation I would rescind it for insolence, but I didn’t, so there!
🙊
well apart from the sacrilege, Janus has a good idea there, roast some parsnips round the lamb.
Do you know how to do them?
Swedes, mash with carrots together far more interesting, lots of butter and pepper, light on the salt.
I roast them with the spuds! Is there a more culinary way? 😷
CO: I might change it to a beef roast just in case. The female parent doesn’t necessarily “do” lamb depending on her mood. That will appease one and all. Yes, I do know how to do parsnips. Local supermarket now stock Hunnish butter — nothing as good as English butter, but far better than the utterly inferior Septic variety. As a rule I avoid salt like the plague — it overpowers the flavour of the proper ingredients.
I found that smokers crave salt but they can add their own! 😷
Sweet potatoes are a common veggie here in Oz – as Jazz says they are not the same as yams..
However, we do not eat sweet potatoes with honey or any other sweetener! They are recommended for diabetics as they are very low GI – and so to add a pile of sugar would negate their value to those sufferers!
Nonetheless, Christina, your recipe sounds delicious!
Oh Janus! Yorkshire puds go with anything and everything! But I am certainly with you as far as parsnips are concerned! Boiled, mashed, roasted – magnificent! It amazes me how often I’m stopped by people in supermarkets here asking how to cook them.
Christopher – I also avoid salt – mainly because I always forgot to add it to anything long before I was told it was ‘unhealthy’!
Sorry Christina, Swedes do not need anything added to them other than butter and white pepper – forget that black stuff!
If nothing else – this post has shown how addicted we all are to our own versions of whatever it is we eat!
Oh Janus! Just read your comment. My mother is a non-smoker (some 30 years or so) and, as far as I’m concerned adds so much salt as to ruin most of what she cooks – I do the cooking when I’m there 🙂 I smoke and I hate salt added to the cooking pot.
Boa, you are a healthy smoker then. Sorry.
Christopher, beef and Yorks pud! Yes! God’s own entree! 😛
Janus, here we go again. Yorshires with lamb….uncivilised.
Roast parsnips mmmmm never have a roast with out them…really yammy er I mean yummy.
Do we have any differences? Maybe it is to do with Nuneaton genes creeping through…:-)
Blood brothers, gaz! Was your granddad a coalminer?
Christina, do you mean yams or are you actually talking about sweet potatoes? I suspect you mean the latter, but I would be grateful for your clarification. Look here.
http://www.ncsweetpotatoes.com/sweet-potatoes-101/difference-between-yam-and-sweet-potato/
Sipu Oh definitely sweet potatoes!
Which, of course, does not deter everyone from calling them yams as in-
I’yam I ‘yam I’yam! Or perhaps yammering?
Interestingly this version does not taste that sweet, just tasty, not like the ghastly marshmallow route frequently used here.
sipu, interesting web site.
I always grow my parsnips, I have no intention of paying the local prices here, quite extortionate as they are a specialist minority vegetable. Bo no-one seems to know what to do with them here either unless they are Canadian.
I expect they got called yams by the black slave population that came from the Caribbean and it stuck..
Everybody knows they are sweet potatoes but they are called yams!
CO: Africa via the Caribbean and the name stuck. The name is derived from the Portuguese “inhame: which in turn originates from the Fula “nyami”, which means “to eat”. It’s a bit like the word “goober”. It entered English from Gullah which took it from Kongo. African cuisines are, in my view, under-rated and they heavily influenced Southern cooking — especially in Louisiana.
Janus: I’ve easily managed to convince everyone of the merits of your argument and a special beef roast will be ordered later.
And you’ll need a good brown gravy with it. Enjoy! 😋
The gravy I can easily make! Please inform Backside that I am perfectly capable of making a roast!
Christopher, Memphis is 80% black. when I lived there I had a girlfriend from Mississippi, white but well used to having them as servants etc all her life. She was totally into black cuisine and used to take me to lunch to these dreadful looking places, shacks in exceptionally dubious neighbourhoods where she knew them all. The food was brilliant. Funny really how well she got on with them as she was terribly ‘Country club’ and a dreadful snob when it came to whites! Wouldn’t get the time of day if you came from North of the Mason Dixon line.
But I draw the line at chicken gizzards!
(Spousal unit doesn’t though, he’ll fight the dogs for the entrails from which the gravy has been made!)
Thank you CO.
Christopher, in this part of the world ‘nyama’ means ‘meat’. A ‘shisa nyama’ is a barbecue. It means ‘burned meat’ just as ‘ braai vleis’ means ‘braised flesh’.
CO: one of my former neighbours was born in Memphis and lived there for 12 years. He happens to have blond hair and blue eyes. Eventually, his parents moved to the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex and they never looked back. Everything you said about it he confirmed — almost to the word! Southern Blacks and Southern Whites can generally accept each other’s existence but Northernser, black or white, can and should go to Hades tout-de-suite!
Sipu: and the origins are explained.