Old #7 Sweet Potatoes Like Paula Deen's only Better!

This recipe is my own take on a Paula Deen recipe using bourbon whiskey. Don't worry Grammy or the kids won't get drunk from your sweet potatoes as the alcohol burns off leaving a nice hickory smoked maple flavor!

What you will need:

3 cups water

1 1/2 cups light brown sugar

4 large sweet potatoes

2 "nip" size bottles of bourbon whiskey (I use Jack Daniels Old #7)

6 tablespoons of butter or margarine 

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon nutmeg

1/2 teaspoon ground dried orange peel

Peel, wash and slice the sweet potatoes than place them vertically in a 9" x 9" baking pan. Bake at 350 F for 35-45 minutes or until a fork can easily go into them.

While the potatoes are baking add the remaining ingredients to a medium sauce pan. Bring to a boil and allow to boil for about 5 minutes stirring constantly. Don't worry your kitchen will only smell like you are making moonshine for a few minutes! Reduce heat to very low temperature and simmer for about 30 minutes stirring occasionally to reduce the sauce by almost half.

Next take the potatoes out of the oven and pour the reduced sauce over them

Put back in oven and bake for an additional 30-40 minutes.

While we are waiting for them to finish baking I'm going to briefly to tell you what the difference is between sweet potatoes and yams are and, yes, there is a difference. The words sweet potatoes and yam are used interchangeably in the US but they are different and most US markets do not carry true yams. If you see yams on sale at your market, usually they will be, in fact, sweet potatoes. Sweet potatoes and yams both have different varieties but I'm not going to go into that as there are over 600 varieties of yams alone and most are grown in Africa! There are also several varieties of sweet potatoes including purple ones!

Both are root vegetables but sweet potatoes are the tuberous, orange, potato like veggie we all pretty much know and are in the plant family Morning Glory, true! And yams are in their own plant family of "yams". Sweet potatoes are just that, sweet with a orange inside and red/orange skin. Yams have a white inside appearance and brownish skin and taste starchy and rather bland. Below is a photo of sweet potatoes and yams, very different!