Sweet Potato Casserole
I’ve been kvetching a lot about Hubby’s turkey day favorites. And yes, I dutifully plan to recreate all of his childhood memories, even serving up his beloved jellied cranberry sauce from a can. But at my house, the feast was quite different. I’m not saying superior. I’m just saying different.
Back home, my gourmet chef grandparents made the most exquisite Thanksgiving meal – with a strong focus on turkey stuffing and gravy. Everything in the stuffing was finely minced by hand and it was loaded with onions and mushrooms. Absolutely superb! (Um, guess who doesn’t like mushrooms.) Though we were gathered for a real American feast, there was no cornbread, and no sweet potato or green bean casseroles. They were dedicated citizens, but those were lines these immigrant cooks wouldn’t cross. And it would never occur to them to bake with marshmallows. It took my very American aunt –who had married into the family – to bring the pumpkin pie and whipped cream. Without her, we would have missed out on that quintessentially American dessert in favor of a Hungarian cake with an unpronounceable name.
I loved their Thanksgiving menu, and wish they were around to show me how to recreate that magic (I wish they were around for so many other more important reasons too). I’ve had to figure a lot of this out on my own and with a little help (ok a lot of help) from my friends and new family. So after picking up a few tips from my mom-in-law’s Thanksgiving table I can now present you with this Americana side (just like hubby had growing up) a super-sweetsie sweet potato casserole topped with hot, golden marshmallows. If you like your sweet potatoes as sweet as I do, add a 1/3 cup of brown sugar to the mashed sweet potatoes and you’re good to go.
WIN A TURKEY!! If you want to be in with a chance to win an Empire turkey for your Thanksgiving Feast, answer this question in the comments: What’s your favorite Thanksgiving side? Or your favorite Thanksgiving memory? Contest closes 9 am Thursday Nov 17 2011. But you can win a turkey every day this week – just check out the contest info post for more details. For full contest rules and information click here.
THIS TURKEY HAS BEEN GIVEN AWAY – ANOTHER CHANCE TO WIN HERE!
Entrants must be aged 18 and over, and US Residents. By entering the contest you give JoyofKosher permission to share your email address with Empire Kosher.
Posted in
About Jamie Geller
comments
145 Responses to Sweet Potato Casserole
Leave a Reply
About jamie geller
Jamie Geller is a bestselling author of the wildly successful QUICK & KOSHER cookbook...
Like Us
Follow Us
Watch Us
Pinterest
Google Plus
My favorite thanksgiving side is and always will be stuffing.
fave side dis is a squash casserole
I love stuffing!!!
Cranberry sauce!
Love sweet potatoes with lots of spices and brown sugar — NO marshmallows.
My favorite is the stuffing – I use my father’s recipe and method. He was a fantastic cook. I also really like my Sweet Potato Souffle. Mine rarely resembles a souffle but the sugary, pecan topping is totally awesome and loaded with calories and cholesterol. So glad I only make it once a year. The kids are ready for it at Rosh Hashanah but I usually manage to put them off a couple of months.
I love everything about Thanksgiving, especially the food. My favorite Thanksgiving side is my Aunt Jean’s glazed carrots. As much as I’ve tried, I just can’t reproduce them. I miss my Aunt Jean, her glazed carrots and more!
I love the stuffing~
Sweet potato casserole with lots of pecans and brown sugar.
My favorite is my grandmothers stuffing. Its make from saltines, eggs, sauteed mushrooms and onions. She never had a recipe and went by “feel” it took me a long time to get the recipe as close to hers as I can but it will never be the same
Of course my favorite side is the sweet potato casserole with marshmallow on top. I always look for the piece with the most marshmallow! yummy!! Now I’m getting excited for Thanksgiving
My absolute favorite Thanksgiving side is the STUFFING!! You just can’t beat that warm delicious stuffing soaked in the gravy of the cooked turkey.
My favorite is stuffing !!! Same stuffing that has been made for many generations in my family. No matter how much stuffing is made there never seems to be enough =)
It’s a close call between this and stuffing. Both are so yummy!
my favorite side dish is cranberry relish.. love the color it adds to the plate. a nice way to serve it is in a half of a peach or pear half.
my favorite side is pumpkin pie.
My favorite side dish for Thanksgiving is homemade cranberry-applesauce. Have always especially liked this holiday.
Stuffing, stuffing, and more stuffing! Actually, only StoveTop will do. None of that fancy stuff with raisins or ‘shrooms or any other wacky stuff will do. Open box, pour into boiling water, devour. YUM!
Being from the south, I love cornbread dressing and would love to win a free kosher turkey. My most memorable Thanksgiving is when my bro-in-law got so mad at my husband over something that happened 30 years ago or so that it ruined everyone’s meal. And it was a wonderful meal, one that my m-in-law had made extra special with some new sides dishes. (Not that it’s my favorite memory, mind you.) BTW, not the only time that someone combination of folks have “had it out” at Thanksgiving. We usually get over it PDQ. Happy Thanksgiving! dl
My favorite Thanksgiving side is bread stuffing. I could eat a ton of it!
Mine would be stuffing.
My favorite is stuffing.
Love this recipe on the sweet pototoes…going to give this a try.
Thanks.
My favorite is homemade cranberry sauce. Leave the canned stuff in the can, please.
This is the one thing I loved as a child and still ove on Thanksgiving. I also love cornbread/wild rice stuffing!
I love stuffing made with carrot juice. Also a fan of cornbread. For a marshmallow-lover, this dish sure looks good!
My fave is stuffing but I’ve fond memories of the sweet potatoes with oranges that was my mother’s yearly contribution to the meal.
Looks a lot like my mother’s sweet potatoes, but with more sweet potatoe and the tiny marshmellows. We’ve been experimenting with spices like cinnamon and nutmeg the last few years.
We love oven baked acorn squash, with the skin on, in olive oil, maple syrup and brown sugar. Yum!
It would have to be sweet potato pie.
When I was younger, we would go over to a family friend’s and have a great meal, watch some football, etc. It was fun and fulfilling, and definitely a great memory.
brussel sprouts!
I make a corn souffle that my whole family loves (me included
).
The side dishes ARE my favorite part of the Thanksgiving feast
I love autumn produce, it’s all very comforting and delicious. One favorite specifically is sweet potatoes! Thanks for another chance to win!
I adore my mom’s creamed cauliflower/
fav side? cranberry sauce it just makes it awesome!
i love anything with sweet potatoes yummmmm!!
Favorite side? The stuffing. I only make this kind once per year, and I make a ton for leftovers. It’s the only recipe I grew up with!
Love love love that horrible for you green bean casserole with fried onion topping!
Always the stuffing! Preferably cooked inside the bird, but I understand the health reasons for abandoning that tradition. I never could manage to like the marshmallows on sweet potatoes. A plain baked sweet potato is fine by me.
I live in Texas now, so everyone does grotty cornbread dressing, which I cannot abide, so what I really crave is my dear mother’s white bread stuffing. Every year, I try to replicate her recipe and, although I’m getting closer, it’s not quite there. We miss her very much.
It’s sweet potato casserole. I have wonderful memories of my grandmother making it for our Thanksgiving although she also put pineapple into the sweet potatoes.
I live in Texas now, so everyone does grotty cornbread dressing, which I cannot abide, so what I really crave is my dear mother’s white bread stuffing. Every year, I try to replicate her recipe and, although I’m getting closer, it’s not quite there. We miss her very much.
Greenbean cassarole. I know this is hardly a gourmet dish, but Thanksgiving is about family and childhood memories. So I will cheat and give a second as well, au gratin potato as both bring back memories.
I like cranberry sauce
My favorite side is the stuffing!
I go back and forth between brown sugar and pecans on my sweet potatoes and marshmallows. This year the kids voted for marshmallows–surprise, surprise : )
My favorite dish is always the mashed potatoes!
cranberry salad
Love sweet potato and marshmallow cassarole. I also like to put in crushed pineapple as well
The stuffing. Not box stuffing either, It has to be homemade or forget it.
I love mashed potatoes, with way too much butter on them. I make extra, and then we have fried mashed potato pancakes the next morning, which is delicious with eggs.
My favorite side is cranberry sauce. It’s so refreshing when paired with all the other heavy stuff.
My favorite side dish is my husbands cornbread stuffing.
My favorite side is grandma’s pickled watermelon rind. Sweet and sour. Yum
tes 1283 yahoo
My favorite side dish is my mom’s stuffing! Thanks!
I like stuffing and usually eat way to much of it. Your sweet potato casserole looks great with the golden brown marshmallows .
Looks delicious. I’m getting hungry already!
When I was in high school a friend and I would shoo out her family and make the entire dinner ourselves. We’d pick the most gourmet recipes we could find and have fun fiddling in the kitchen all day long, listening to music, shmoozing…
I am so excited to try this this year (especially because my husband’s mom used to make something like this when he was growing up) – hmmm…a favorite memory – maybe the first time I tasted stuffing, I was like, “what is this deliciousness?” – and then I was so pleasantly surprised to learn that stuffing is pretty easy to make!
My favorite side is sweet potatoes but baked.. if I make our own mush we add make homemade marshmellows lol MY favorite Turkey day memory is 2 years ago, my kids and I were restarting our lives and decded to start new traditions, so we went to serve and play at the shleter, my kids got to see everyone is the same, everyone gets crapped on- excuse that but they do and they do recover, they just need people to believe in them. I tt was nice becuase my kids learned it was ok to open and share, help others and give…my ex was very selfish and a hoarder so it was a great change
my absolute favorite side dish is home made cranberry sauce. i like it tart so i don’t use as much sugar as the recipe says. i like it so much i try to buy bags of cranberries after thanksgiving and freeze them to use year round (especially at passover). i’m thinking of trying to cook the cranberries in cranberry juice instead of water one time just for an experiment. has anyone tried this?
My favorite side dish is baked corn casserole. And my favorite Thanksgiving memory is of the time when my kids were kids and we all sat down to eat the meal together.
this looks yummy!
oh sorry i forgot my favorite thanksgiving dish is kasha stuffing and the desserts!
We have a lot in common! My husband grew up on this sweet potato/marshmallow side dish and my parents and grandparents were great cooks
I love stuffing, but, have to improvise and look up recipes online. My relatives made everything from memory.
This reminds me of roasting marshmallows over a campfire–Delicious!
My favorite side is green beans with canned fried onions, though it is hard to find pareve fried onions in a regular grocery store. I ate it at a friend’s house and really enjoyed it.
My favorite side is stuffing. It is carried over from my grandmother who used the stove top rather than stuffing the turkey. We use a big roasting pan to make it in. I have a family member who requests a mini roasting pan of their own to take home. Of course, I honor it every year. It has become a tradition.
I’m not fond of the very sweet sweet potato casserole. I like them baked or fried but not casseroled. I prefer all the savory sides like rutabaga/potato mashed.
Definitely my mom’s mushroom sauce. Amazing family recipe!!!
My favorite is a mixture of cranberry sause and mandarin oranges.
I love mashed potatoes, with fried onions and gravy.
canned cranberry sauce should be outlawed
My favorite side is freshly made cranberry sauce. My fondest memory is taking my children (when they were young) to the Thanksgiving parade. We would then all go to our friend’s restaurant for breakfast following the parade. We were always freezing but it was good wholesome family fun!!
I adore sausage stuffing… and mashed potatoes… and the roasted vegetables that my friend Debbie makes (we share Thanksgiving with them each year). And the onions. Oy. I love Thanksgiving
My family’s favorite side dish would be Buttercup Squash mixed with ciinnamon, brown sugar, and butter.
Favorite side has to be my grandmother’s homemade cornbread dressing, with sweet taters with marshmallows a close second!
My favorite side dish is Cranberry sauce with orange garnish
My favorite Thanksgiving side dish is my cranberry fruit salad. I just started eating sweet potatoes two years ago and I love them. Can’t wait to try your recipe. When I was growing up, my Mom would use canned Yams–and it just wasn’t a holiday meal if the marshmallows on top weren’t burned! LOL – needless to say, I wasn’t a fan of canned yams. 40 years later, I discovered that I LOVE yams and sweet potatoes!
My favorite side dish is the cornbread dressing. Love it.
7 layer salad is my favorite side. A different taste in every bite.
My favorite side is pumpkin pie with a praline pecan topping… Delish!!
I don’t think I could pick just one favorite. Seems after the main meal, there is enough food to last for a few more days and everyone keeps going back for more. Sweet potatoes are one of my favorites but green bean casserole is really good too. Happy Thanksgiving everyone, eat a lot!!
Dressing – stuffing is my favorite thing, generally not to fancy my FIL made it with craisins and nuts and something else one time and it wasn’t my favorite.
I like Cranberry sauce as a holiday side dish.
These were the sweet potatoes we grew up on, Yummy! But my favorite side dish is my mothers stuffing. I still can’t get mine to taste like hers after watching her make it for over 20 years!
My favorite side is stuffing.
My favorite side is the stuffing!
My favorite Thanksgiving side is Candied Yams.
I love stuffing!It’s my favorite side dish.
My favorite side dish is green bean casserole!
My Favorite Side is Baked Macaroni and cheese from scratch starting with a basic Béchamel sauce.
I love stuffing and homemade cranberry sauce! Yum!
I can’t get enough stuffing!
my favorite side is my moms homemade mashed potatoes:D
My mom’s stuffing.
My favorite Thanksgiving side is my mom’s homemade mashed potatoes. But oh boy, that sweet potato casserole with those browned marshmallows looks pretty good, too!
I prepare a rice and raisin stuffing for my kosher bird. The family loves it.
My favorite side dish is stuffing. Bread cubes, onion, carrot, celery, broth, salt, & pepper. Simple and delicious!
Sweet potatoes have always been one of my favorites. I never made it with the big marshmallows though. Maybe I’ll give it a try this year.
My favorite side homemade mashed potatoes
My favorite Thanksgiving memories are of the years after my father, may he rest in peace, had passed and a friend of my mother’s, also a “single” parent, decided for all major holidays they would combine the households. Thanksgiving, always my favorite secular holiday, was amazing. A huge turkey, both canned and homemade cranberry sauce, homemade stuffing to die for, the whole shebang. Cece always made a cherry cheesecake because it was my favorite and I made a huge deal over how wonderful it was and how much I knew it took to make each year-plus all the time one had to wait between dinner and the desired cheesecake. The Moms made it a point to invite anyone and everyone who had no family in the area to join our feast. There would be anywhere from 20 to forty people squeezed into the house talking, laughing, watching parades, and always the classic Cowboy/Redskin game. To this day, all of us children try to make this holiday as special for our communities-we are spread all over the world-as our moms did way back then. Thanks for letting me relive that time a little early this year.
My favorite Thanksgiving memory is the year my husband decided to purchase a large turkey… except it was too big for our oven! We had to slice it in half and carefully placed it together to present it on the buffet table! A little garnish here and there and one could barely tell it was a Frankenstein Turkey!
OOOPS! My comment posted as a reply–that is twice now–I guess I am doing something wrong
I’m a sucker for whiskey sweet potatoes.
Just seeing the delicious sweet potato casserole brought back so many
memories. My mom always made this for special occasions. Yours looks so
inviting. I can hardly wait till Thanksgiving!
My favorite side/ memory is actually making the sides and turkey for all the past thanksgivings! I love doing it. I spend 2 days usually beforehand planning it all out and cooking. I have so much fun doing this for the family.
Since today’s sweet potato casserole is one near and dear to my heart, I wanted to comment on it as well. When I make this dish, I too like my sweet potatoes as sweet as can be so much so that I not only add brown sugar to the mashed sweet potatoes but also some butter, cinnamon, nutmeg, pancake syrup, orange juice and very thinly sliced (peeled) oranges. It gives the sweet potatoes not only a more sweet flavor but a little bit more complexity. The ingredients always make people go hmmmm, whatever is in there is darn good!.
My favorite is the mashed potatoes : ) classic and yummy
Fave memory: I was in college in Boston. Mom went to Israel, dad was home alone. I went home thanksgiving day – not to a turkey, but to this wonderful thing that was like a potato kugel with a rib-eye steak baked into it. Something his mother used to make in the “old country!” OMG, It smelled & tasted divine. Mom never let dad in the kitchen. When she would go to Israel, she would cook up a storm before hand and freeze everything for him. Most of it was still in the freezer when she came home, bc it was his only opportunity in the kitchen!
My favorite Thanksgiving memory is when my husband’s friend hosted the meal but asked me to make the turkey at his apartment. He didn’t have all the necessary ingredients or equipment, so I brought my things from home. I realized halfway through that I was missing some items, so I had to send my husband back home to pick up everything I’d forgotten! The turkey came out delicious anyway
I make twice baked potatoes and thats my favorite side. YUM!
I cant wait to try this dish….is looks yummy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
My wife makes yams with marshmallows. This looks very close. I’m wish I had some now!
I am having a sweet craving looking at your casserole. My favorite Thanksgiving side dish is the stuffing. I know. I know. How about a bowl of carbs for dinner. Oh well it is twice a year. I also like to add a new vegetable each year. It started about 3 years ago I guess. Another favorite sauteed spinach with garlic and pepper flakes, simple but tasty.
My favorite Thanksgiving side is mushroom stuffing made INSIDE the bird. Lots of yummy celery, onions and sauteed mushrooms infused with turkey juices. It never lasts long in our house!
we LOVE Stuffing and sweet potatoes at this house.
My favorite memory is of the wonderful T-Days with my late Aunt Frances, A”H. She could cook like nobody’s business and she routinely hosted 20+ guests with utter grace and serenity, not a hair out of place, not a hint of anxiety. And everything went off perfectly, as always. I have many of her recipes but there’s no recipe for the kind of class that woman had.
But it wasn’t a holiday unless one of the kids broke a parfait glass (who even has those anymore?). Every year one always got broken, no matter how careful we were. I wonder if any were left by the time we reached college.
I was born in the wrong country and further compounded my error by marrying and giving birth to the wrong people. I hate Thankgsgiving. I hate turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, sweet potatoes, stuffing, and cranberry sauce. Oh yeah – and pumpkin pie. I will concede that we have to have turkey, but I don’t see why we have to have boring stuffing, boring mashed potatoes, and the same candied sweet potatoes every year like they all want. Why can’t we have stuffing with rice/fruits/nuts? Why can’t we remember that we live in the South and try sweet potato pie? Nope – they all want the boring, traditional stuff. So… my favorite Thanksgiving side dish is fresh fruit salad – especially when pineapples go on sale for $2.99 and I add one of those
My favorite Thanksgiving memory was when I was a little girl and
my brother came home from his tour of duty in the Air Force to spend
Thanksgiving with us. I will never forget hopping in the car with my Dad after we received a phone call that he was stranded 30 miles away. He had hitch hike for several hundred miles in his uniform! I was thrilled to see him and am still as proud of him today as I was of him on that Thanksgiving Day. God bless all our service men and women and their families.
I always look forward to Thanksgiving, but this year I was shocked that a kosher turkey breast is $5.99 a pound at Jewel. Looks like we may be eating schnitzel this year for Thanksgiving.
Sweet potatoe pie!!!
This is a nice change form my usual garlic sweet potato coins side dish. Yum.
My family is trying to cut out the sugars and fats so this year we are having plain sweet potatoes with cinnamon and sugar free brown “sugar”, however yours look fantastic!
Since I have never tasted pumkin pie and it doesn’t sound appealing to me I always make a wonderful pecan pie for Thanksgiving. It is so rich and delicious yet I only make it for the holiday.
Our families favorite holiday side suprisingly is roasted brussel sprouts. I finely cut and sautee beef fry and onions. Add to the halved brussle sprouts on a big roastiong pan. Olive oil, salt, & pepper and into a screaming hot oven they go until browned. Super yummy!
I love the sweet potatoes with marshmallows too… but I only use the mini marshmallows…
My fave side at thanksgiving is always the sweet potatoe casserole. My daughters fave is the green bean casserole with breaded onions. My brother and father always loved the leftover turkey sandwiches with cranberry sauce, and then a piece of warm apple pie. Sadly, both parents and younger siblings have all passed away. This year is my first holiday totally alone, without siblings or parents. My heart breaks for this. But seeing your question, I brought myself to remember the sweet times and sweet memories… my father, uncles, and brother always eating in an hour what took us women 3 days to make!!!
Thanks so much for the Kosher turkey giveaway. If I win this you can be sure it will add to making new memories for the future of my daughter and grandchildren…. giving the next generation some sweet holiday memories!
oh, i love a good sweet potato casserole, though we top ours with pecans instead of marshmallows
My favorite side is buttered corn. I just can’t get enough of it on Turkey Day, my family makes sure it’s on the table every year.
My children have school on Thanksgiving, but one year, a relative visited with her children on Thanksgiving. When my children came home from school, they were were so happy to see their relatives and surprised to see turkey and pumpkin pie.
My favorite side is my mothers stuffing. Longtime tradition that I cannot imagine the holiday without
My favorite side is sweet potatoes. I love them and only really make them at holidays
This sweet potato casserole is exactly how we always served it. Now I don’t use all the marshmallows, but use cinnamon and butter….and
brown sugar. Yum!
Thats a LOT of marshmallows! I recall making it with quite a bit fewer marshmallows, and most of them melted into the casserole, and just dotting the top with some pieces and some margarine.
But each to their own!
Enjoy Thanksgiving, and thanks for running this giveaway!
My daughter made up this recipe: 5 diced small sweet potatoes, 1 butternut squash and 4 apples with the skin left on. A dash of cinnamon…toss like a salad, bake uncovered until soft…about 1 – 1 1/2 hours. Delish
I love my mom’s corn casserole.
My mother loved to cook sweet potatoes that she raised. She baked yummy sweet potatoes by topping with a little brown sugar.
I too have many Thanksgiving memories from the years when our children were young. The evening before was always a night for our family to go out together to see a movie and have dinner. It was followed by an awesome time at our aunt and uncle’s house with a large extended family from both sides sharing Auntie Annabelle’s special appetizers and traditional Thanksgiving fare. Dessert was usually at least 5-6 different home made pies. Our adult children still love to talk about those special memories …
My favorite Thanksgiving side is my Dad’s stuffing, i look forward to it every year!
my favorite dish is dressing and my children don’t think it is Thanksgiving without the sweet potato casserole with marshmallows on top
My favorite Thanksgiving side was always my grandmother’s dressing. A close second Sweet Potatoes in any form.
And the winner is Sheryl K!!
looks yummy! Can’t wait to try it out
It’s not thanksgiving wihtout the sweet potato casserole!
Without a doubt my favorite side is the stuffing/dressing. I think I actually like it better than the turkey even!
Mmmm, I love everything about Thanksgiving. My very favorite side dish is my Mom’s southern cornbread turkey dressing (she came from Tennessee). Nobody, but NOBODY, called Mom’s dressing “stuffing”, mind you! She laughingly said only Yanks call dressing stuffing. Besides, we heap it loosely (never smash) it in a small roaster, we don’t stuff the bird. She left us this past September, blessed be her memory, and this will be our first Thanksgiving missing her. Everyone in the family knows and loves her dressing, and I’m so grateful I learned to make it when I was way younger. Our kids call it “Mom’s” (me), my sibs and I call it “Mom’s” (her, of course) and SHE called it “Mother’s” (her mom)…. clearly it’s a long-standing family recipe (Grandma likely called it “Mother’s”, too…) , and all our family LOVES it.