Top baked meals {sweet potatoes loaded with toppings}

This is my very favorite meal to make right now. I adore sweet potatoes. Next week, I’ll probably have a new favorite, but for now, this is it!

Ingredients:

4 sweet potatoes

1/4 C. buttermilk

salt and pepper to taste

bacon

grated cheese

chives

Whatever else sounds yummy–black beans, sour cream, etc!

Bake sweet potatoes at 400* for 45 minutes {or more depending on size of sweet potato}. Remove sweet potato skins and mash insides with buttermilk and salt and pepper to taste. Top with all kinds of yummy things and enjoy! Serves 4-5. And makes great leftovers!

Okay, will someone please explain the difference between a sweet potato and a yam?! We were trying to figure it out in the workshop the other day, and no one knew the answer!

15 comments

  1. I guess store owners have figured out that most of us haven’t a clue…hahah…call them yams and most of us won’t know the difference.
    All I know is I never ate sweet potatoes much until about 20 yrs ago when I found out I was allergic to regular potatoes. A friend invited me to dinner…and sweet potatoes were on the menu. She assured me they were different than regular white potatoes…and I have been loving them ever since. Your recipe looks tasty.

  2. My husband is a sweet potato farmer (so eat those sweet potatoes up!)! I just asked him and he says that yams are a subtropical tuber and are predominatly white fleshed. Sweet potatoes are a root vegetable and while the majority are orange fleshed they do come in several other colors and varieties.

  3. sweet potatoes have a much higher Glycemic Index than yams. I buy red garnette yams, but we call them sweet potatoes.

  4. Lisa,
    Yams aren’t generally found in our areas. They are native to Africa & Asia & are much larger than what we think of. They are a mainstay to the diets of those areas & are used in many different ways – particularly since they keep well & can be used during seasons when there is no fresh food. Had friends who lived in Africa for a number of years & yams were eaten daily, as there isn’t much else to add to their diet.
    Much less flavorful than our sweet potatoes & more fibrous.

    Far different & not even related. So – when you see yams in a can – it’s just sweet potatoes. but – nothing wrong w/ sweet potatoes!! They’re such a healthy, wonderfully tasting food.

  5. Sweet potatos and yams are not from the same botanical family. Also, yams can be sweeter than sweet potatoes. I’ve learned this the hard way-food allergies! I’ve had to eliminate entire food families.

    Your meal looks delicious and so easy!

    Andrea

  6. Love sweet potatoes! I’ll have to give your recipe a try. Sometimes you’ll see true yams in places like Whole Foods. They are white inside and smaller, thinner & skinny but they are good.

  7. Lisa this looks absolutely fantastic – going to try this on the weekend – might be the perfect Mothers Day dinner!

  8. Funny enough, a couple of friends of mine and I had a conversation a few weeks ago about the difference between a sweet potato and a yam. Although, in North America the terms sweet potato and yam are interchangeable, in truth they are two very different root vegetables found in different parts of the world. Sweet potatoes are native to North America and yams are found in Africa. Yams are actually larger and look more tubular than sweet potatoes. I’ve never had a true yam but this is what I was able to find out! hope this helps 🙂

  9. 🙂

    I must try this!!!
    Sweet potatoes are a kind of yam, as yams are plants with tubers (sorry I’m portuguese, so I’m not shure if I’m being explicit,…) =)

    Love your blog =)

  10. This looks really good. I’m going to try it! Thanks for sharing. I don’t know the difference between a sweet potato and yam. Once a little old lady in the grocery store told me they were the same thing, so I took her word for it. Who knows, maybe I’ve been cooking the wrong thing at Thanksgiving for years. 😉
    ~FringeGirl

  11. we eat sweet potatoes all the time. we make fries, plain and i put them thru the juicer! they are so good for you.
    not sure about the yams. i think of yams that come in the can for the holidays!

    thanks for the recipe.

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