A Thanksgiving Sweet Potato Bake-Off

I hope your Thanksgiving was as wonderful as mine. We did our usual back-to-back Thanksgiving dinners, shuttling between mine and Mr. TBTAM’s families, trying not to eat too much or too little at either one.

This year, my family eschewed the homemade turkey and instead had a relaxed luncheon at the Valley Green Inn situated on Philadelphia’s Wissahickon Valley Forbidden Drive, one of my favorite places in the whole world.

I’ve biked, hiked, walked, or run that trail countless times over the years, alone and with friends and family. The place is so special to us that my sister Fran’s ashes were scattered over the waterfalls not far from the Inn, and I can feel her presence in the sounds of the rushing waters. Having our family Thanksgiving on the Wissahickon felt just like coming home for the holiday.

The food at the Inn was great, the service fabulous, and the walk along the trail afterwards a real joy. I think we should do it again next year!

Of course, that was just lunch. Fortunately, I ate lightly, because next up was dinner at Mr TBTAM’s mother’s home. That meal has morphed over the years from a traditional Turkey-centered dinner to a more varied meal with contributions from all the generations, celebrating both meat eaters and vegetarians.

My contribution was, as it has often been, candied sweet potatoes. Unfortunately, on Wednesday afternoon, I realized that I had not purchased enough sweet potatoes. My sister-in-law offered to pick some sweets up for me on her trip to H Mart, the now-storied gigantic Korean grocery that is a great source for well-priced produce and Asian foods. She suggested that we get Korean sweet potatoes instead of more American sweets. I’d never eaten Korean sweet potatoes, but she and her daughter had, and they were convinced they’d be delicious. I was not so sure. We were also not sure how the Korean sweets would behave, so decided not to combine them with the American sweets in the same pan, but cook and bake them separately. Sounds like we had ourselves the set up for a sweet potato bake off.

Now, if there’s anything Mr TBTAM’s family loves, it’s a produce competition. I remember my first family dinner with them, where they spent what seemed like forever discussing the farm stand apples they had gotten that day, anticipating the after-dinner taste test when they would determine if these really were THE best Winesaps ever grown. Who are these people, I recall asking my siblings, who like me, thought that potato chips and dip made from Lipton’s French Onion mix were the ultimate gourmet delight. I mean, ‘cmon – who gets excited about apples? To us, apples were just a second fiddle food, or what my mother would suggest we eat when the answer to “Are there any Pop Tarts left?” was “No, but Daddy gets paid on Thursday. Why don’t you have an apple?” Of course, I’ve since changed my tune, expanded my palate and learned over the years to appreciate real food over processed treats. And, I can now tell you without a doubt that Honeycrisps, not Winesaps, are THE best apple ever grown. But back to the sweet potato taste-off…

What are Korean Sweet Potatoes?

Korean sweet potatoes or Goguma are a sweet potato variety found across China, Japan and Korea. In Japan, they are called Satsumaimo. Despite their name, sweet potatoes are not potatoes. Nor are they yams. Sweet potatoes are in fact a tuber of the morning glory family, thought to have originated in South and Central America, where Christopher Columbus discovered them along with the new world. The sweet potato was brought to Asia either by Europeans after Columbus, or by the Polynesians long before Columbus. Or maybe they are indigenous to Asia, where 57 million year old fossils of leaves from the morning glory family have been recently identified. Who knows?…

Regardless of its history, Korean sweet potatoes are purplish red on the outside with a starchy, cream colored interior that becomes yellow as it cooks. They are drier and sweeter than the American varieties, and are extremely flavorful, taking on what has been described as a chestnut flavor when cooked. Like all sweet potatoes, Goguma are high in fiber and packed with nutrients, and there are many ways to cook them, including a traditional Korean candied version.

The Bake-Off Methodology

For our bake-off, I simply used our traditional Thanksgiving candied sweet potato recipe, which I’ve shared before on this blog. I peeled and cut the American sweet potatoes and the Goguma, then prepared a pan of each for a taste test at dinner time.

The dryness of the Goguma necessitated some adjustments to my recipe. It took a good 10-15 minutes longer to soften the Goguma when first cooked.

In addition, they soaked up the glaze very quickly during the baking phase, so I made some extra glaze and even stole some from the pan of American sweets so the Goguma wouldn’t dry out. This did not appear to put the American sweets at a disadvantage, as they remained moist and caramelized beautifully.

The results

The Korean sweet potatoes, though not as pretty as the American sweets, tasted delicious! They were indeed flavorful, and their inherent nutty flavor came though, even with the extra glaze. They were perfectly cooked, neither too soft nor too firm, and had more density and substance than the American sweets. They tasted just as good as the American sweets, and a few preferred them (including me).

If this were a scientific publication, I’d say that our un-blinded, non-randomized, not-entirely-controlled taste test suggests that Korean sweet potatoes are equivalent and non-inferior to American sweet potatoes when baked using a traditional American Thanksgiving candied sweet potato recipe. Further research, of course is necessary.

Happy Holidays to all!