More sweet potato? No thanks...

Another All-American acquisition of mine recently was this tin of Princella Cut Sweet Potatoes, or Yams as they are also known on that side of the pond (over here the term "yam" tends to refer to the massive log-like vegetables you see stacked up outside African food shops).

Princella claim to be "America's Leading Sweet Potato" - though the accolade of "America's Favorite Yam" apparently belongs to a rival company called Bruce's Yams (so they say on their website, anyway, the brilliantly-named YamRight.com). Both companies will no doubt have been selling plenty of their products of late though, as sweet potatoes also form an important part of the traditional Thanksgiving dinner, whether that be on their own as a side vegetable, made into a sweet potato pie, or most commonly topped with marshmallows and baked in the oven, to be served alongside the turkey itself. As a Brit, for whom cranberry or apple sauce is about the sweetest thing we ever have to accompany a roast, this took some getting used to the first time I experienced a Thanksgiving dinner.


I was a little surprised to see they had been packed in a 'light syrup', given that sweet potatoes are obviously already quite sweet in their natural state. Trying a piece straight from the tin, they had become almost tooth-achingly so, making me keen to drain off as much of the liquor as possible.

The sweet potato chunks were also very soft having been pre-cooked, but it seemed Princella hadn't quite done the job properly in terms of peeling them properly, with one or two pieces still having a 'beard' attached, which was a little off-putting.

Despite the over-sweetness, I decided I would laugh in the face of the anti-sugar brigade and go for the classic marshmallow-topped Thanksgiving dish. Partly because I had already bought a bag of marshmallows anyway.




A little more quickly than I was expecting, the marshamallows had melted down, browned and crisped up quite substantially. I spooned some onto a plate and prepared myself for the sugar rush.

And good grief, they really were unbelievably sweet. I was just having them on their own, after my main meal, which was a good thing as I am not sure I could have coped with having them on the same plate as something savoury. They took "sickly sweet" to an entirely new level - I think "abominably sweet" would be more appropriate. With sweet potatoes in their natural state, this is still a very sweet dish, but at least bearably so. But the canned version is just too much here - I think it would be better used in a pie or some other recipe.

I could only manage a small amount, and so intended to scrape the marshmallow off the leftovers the next day and do something else with the remaining sweet potato. Except after a night in the fridge, the sugar in the marshmallows had all but dissolved, leaving the sweet potatoes in a kind of weird jelly formed from the syrup and the gelatine, which didn't appeal massively.




But in fact, cold from the fridge, the sweetness of the potato chunks wasn't quite so pronounced, so - waste not want not - I had a few chunks as they were, with a bit of nice sour natural yoghurt to make them more palatable still.




Of course I still had all the syrup from the tin left as well, which had also separated out overnight into two layers, like the fat and gravy from a roasting tin - except here it was a kind of sweet potatoey sludge at the bottom, with the remaining syrup on top, looking like a diabetic's urine.

This time, I felt that for the good of my health it was probably better to dispense with this rather than attempt drinking it. Not sure I will be trying tinned sweet potatoes again, so I suppose I will never know whether Princella's or Bruce's are the best. I think I can live with that though.