Weekly Recipe: Whipped Sweet Potatoes (for my birthday)

On my actual birthday (February 14th aka Valentine’s Day) restaurants are usually so packed because everyone is out on a date, so my dream night is usually to make a fancy dinner at home with my girl. This year, to accompany the steak we will be making brown butter & sage, I’m planning whipped sweet potatoes!

What you need:

• Sweet potatoes (3 bigger ones should do the trick)

• A few sprigs of thyme 

• A handful of pancetta or bacon, whatever you have handy!

• 3-ish (choose your own adventure) cloves of garlic

• 6TBSP BUTTER

• A big handful of sage leaves (around a dozen)

• Sprinkle of nutmeg

• ¼ cup creme fraiché or sour cream - whatever you have handy

• Couple splashes of half & half

• Kosher salt and fresh black pepper to taste

What to do:

• We’re not going to boil these potatoes, we are going to bake them to get them soft!

• Throw the oven on at 400, poke your potatoes with a fork, put each one in foil then toss them in the oven for an hour or until soft 

• While those are cooking, heat up a skillet and cook your pancetta or bacon, stirring a bit until it’s cooked (should take about 5min)

• Add the garlic to just be friends with the bacon for another minute or two 

• Take everything out of the pan, set aside.

• Now, time to brown the butter - if you’ve never made browned butter, you literally just heat butter in a skillet until it turns brown. So first, put the butter in your skillet, swirl it around until it starts to get pale golden - not brown yet - and that is when you add the sage leaves

• Another 30-45 seconds (this happens fast) and the butter should be brown and the sage leaves crispy!

• Take the skillet off the heat and take the sage leaves out with a fork and set them to dry on a paper towel

• Ok, now peel your potatoes and add them to the bowl of your food processor- if you don’t have one you can use a stand mixer - don’t have one? You can use a hand mixer, but if you have no electricity-driven mixing machines, I’m assuming you could also do this by hand you — just might be sore

• Add literally all of the remaining ingredients one at a time - butter, nutmeg, creme fraiché, half and half, sage leaves, bacon and garlic… and at this point, eyeball a little salt and pepper then just keep tasting until it’s where you want it! 

• Also, feel free to keep adding half and half until you reach your perfectly luxurious consistency! 

Now enjoy these fancy, but easy, whipped sweet potatoes!