A new fad in Texarkana at a local barbecue place is French fries made of sweet potatoes. I am sure the French know nothing about it. I haven't tried the orange colored offerings but was wondering if anyone on the forum has.
Whiz, FF sweet potatoes are fairly common in SC. They seem to be sweeter -duh - and softer, but I still prefer the normal white one. Sweet potato chips, as well.
The other treatment that's popular are seasoned FFs. Salt and spice with a bite.
Bil
Indeed, I have been making French fries out of sweet potatoes for as long as I can remember. Not that I can claim to be ahead of the curve on this on but it seemed like a good idea the first time I tried it. They are mighty tasty. That is if you like sweet potatoes, I do and would almost always prefer a sweet potato over a plain white one.
Since yesterday..?
I have a Bon Appetit magazine that had a piece on using plantains as "french fries." That sounded really strange but potentially edible.
So you just peel one of the pumpkin puppies and fry it normal? We do potatoes with skin on and pretty well seasoned and peppered, so that'd be normal for us. When we have sweet potatoes (once a year; Thanksgiving) they're canned and done in a pan with butter and brown sugar... So that's the only way I see them.
Ace; the potatoes have eyes.... well, and legs if they're Whiz's.
OK.OK. You are making me drool. I will have to try it when I get some from the store. Incidentally, I found that the best way to grow sweet potatoes is to put a whole potato in the ground and not just plant "slips" that grow from the potatoes. When the plant sprouts in a very slightly elevated hill, begin to hill up the dirt around the plant as the sprouts grow upward, and continue to hill up until you get a mound that is about 12" above the surrounding soil. You can plant potatoes about 6 feet apart, as opposed to the recommended 15" to 18". My record is one bushel of potatoes from one single hill, and I failed to find some that were over 4 feet from the center that I turned up later. The plants are amazing in that large tubers may be found up to 12" below the ground, and maybe deeper than that, in sandy soil up to 4 feet from the center. I have never since come close to that record and cannot even begin to remember the exact weather conditions. I do know that a wet year produces many very small "taters," a dry year, few, but large monsters. The ideal year seems to be a warm summer with days not exceeding very low 90's with only enough regular rain to prevent wilting of the plants and no low temperature extremes either, which, along with very wet spells following a dry spell, may cause second growth that ruins the crop by causing tubers to get hard streaks and green fibrous tissue. Sweet potatoes are in the morning glory family. Unfortunately, deer love the greens and can devour a patch over night. Fortunately, the tops grow back rapidly. New strains are hard to develop because few plants produce seeded flowers, if they flower at all. Alias---> The Rondo Gardener 8)
Now the questions remains......do you peel the sweet potatoes or not, before your cut them and fry them. We don't peel white ones.
Bill
I do not. I always eat my sweet potatoes with the skin still on.
I just happened to have a big baked sweet potato with my chicken fried steak and country gravy last night. That was sure good.
I always peel them too. The one very bad characteristic sweet potatoes have is the sap that cannot be removed from your hands by ordinary means. I use a cleaner with orange oil to do the job. At least the lingering smell is good.
Sweet potatoes are cured in the country by warming them to about 108�ºF for several days in a potato shed. The evaporating sap often condenses on the roof below the vent stack and runs down over the edge.
George Washington Carver (http://plantanswers.tamu.edu/recipes/sweetpotatoes.html) was perhaps the most knowledgable and eloquent expert of sweet potato horticulture and many other aspects of botany and food crops that the world has seen. It is a shame that his eloquence is not emulated by the current generation of high school grads. This link lists the many recipes of his repertoire.