Mashed Sweet Potatoes Recipe

These mashed sweet potatoes are a perfect sweet and savory side dish for fall. With just six ingredients, they’re perfect for cool winter nights, or a holiday spread.

One of my husband’s favorite foods is sweet potatoes. When we first got married, I thought they were one of the world’s worst foods, but after making them a few times for his benefit, I started trying different recipes and eventually realized I just didn’t like them the way I’d had them before – stuffed with brown sugar or sorghum molasses.

It turns out, there are all kinds of ways to cook sweet potatoes, their light sweetness, for me, needs to offset by salt and savory flavors to make them delicious.

Since then I’ve shared some of my favorites, like thyme roasted sweet potatoes – the perfect savory offset with thyme and garlic. And sweet potato egg nests – there’s just something about those egg yolks on sweet potatoes hash browns that is a little bit addictive.

And these mashed sweet potatoes.

They’re sweet, but also little savory. Sometimes I leave out the cinnamon and make them more savory by adding thyme or rosemary. But my husband really loves them with the cinnamon, and I like them too – as long as there’s enough salt to go with it.

Ingredients for mashed sweet potatoes

This recipe uses six ingredients including the sweet potatoes. This makes them a simple side dish to pull out of your hat for a weeknight dinner.

• Sweet potatoes. Most of the common orange sweet potatoes you find in the grocery store are Beauregard, which are perfect for mashing, or Covington, which are also very good. White sweet potatoes tend to be more starchy, and slightly less sweet. They mash very well, but I prefer to save white sweet potatoes to fry or roast, and use an orange variety for mashing.
• Half and half. This helps make a creamy texture and rich flavor. You can also use straight cream.
• Butter. I use salted butter, for the above mentioned reason that I like plenty of salt to offset the sweetness of sweet potatoes. Butter, similar to cream, helps create a creamy, rich dish.
• Maple syrup. This adds a sweet, woody flavor to your sweet potatoes, lending your dish more complexity. You can omit this if you want to lean more into the savory side of your mashed sweet potatoes recipe. I find that this doesn’t necessarily make the sweet potatoes more sweet, but it does add a nice richness in the flavor.
• Cinnamon. This adds a warmth to your sweet potatoes. As mentioned above, you can omit this, and instead add a savory herb like rosemary or thyme if you want to lean more into the savory side.
• Salt. This helps deepen the flavor of your sweet potatoes, and offset the sweetness a little bit, creating that delicious sweet and savory flavor profile that so many of use love.

How to make mashed sweet potatoes

The first step to making good mashed sweet potatoes is in how you cook them.

The first method is to peel, dice, boil, then drain. This results in a mild flavor.

The second is to bake your sweet potatoes, split them open, and scoop out the insides, then mash them. This results in a stronger, richer flavor.

Neither one of these is wrong, just different. If you want fast and mild, boiling is the way to go.

If you really love that sweet potato flavor and have time, baking is definitely your best option.

One way you can mitigate the time it takes to bake them is to do it ahead of time. If you have the oven on for something else another time, or are going to be in the kitchen for a while, and know you won’t have time to bake sweet potatoes later, bake a big batch, let them cool, and store in the refrigerator for a few days until you’re ready to make mashed sweet potatoes. Be sure to reheat the potatoes before adding the butter, etc. to them so that the butter will melt in.

Then scoop out, mash, and proceed with the next steps:

1. Place hot, cooked sweet potatoes in a large bowl or pot, and mash with a potato masher. You can also use a mixer, but I like the texture better when we use the hand potato masher.
   
   
2. Add remaining ingredients, and continue to mash until the butter has melted in, and everything is blended together well.
3. Serve hot, with dinner.

How to store leftovers

Sore sweet potatoes in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to a week.

1. To reheat, place in an oven-safe container, cover tightly, and bake at 350º for 15 minutes.
2. Or, microwave in a microwave-safe container at 60 second intervals, stirring between each interval, until heated through.
3. You can also heat them up on the stove top. Add a little bit of water to the bottom of a heavy sauce pan, place sweet potatoes in pan, cover, and heat over low heat for several minutes. Stir sweet potatoes, and continue to heat, stirring frequently until potatoes are as hot as you prefer.

More Sweet Potato Recipes For you

• Sweet potato chili recipe
• Sweet Potato Pie recipe
• One-pan sweet potato hash
• Whole 30 oven-fried sweet potato curly fries
• Gluten-Free Sweet Potato Casserole

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